"S 



m 



s 



i 



':L^^l 



1 V ' • 



,T,^; -«'».' 









SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE, 



TWELVE CHAPTERS. 



BY 



EALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

II 




B s T :Nr : 

FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO. 

1870. 

I 







Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 

in the Clerk's OflBce of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 
Cambridge. | 



CONTENTS 



Page 

Society and Solitude ■ . . 1 

Civilization 15 

Art 31 

Eloquence 53 

Domestic Life 91 

Farming 121 

Works and Days 139 

Books 167 

Clubs . . . 199 

Courage 225 

Success 251 

Old Age • . . . • 279 



SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 



SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 

I FELL in with a humorist, on my travels, vfho 
had in his chamber a cast of the Rondaiiini Me- 
dusa, and who assured me that the name \vhich 
that fine work of art bore in the catalogues was 
a misnomer, as he was convinced that the sculp- 
tor who carved it intended it for Memory, tlie 
mother of the Muses. In the conversation that 
followed, my new friend made some extraordinary 
confessions. " Do you not see,*^ he said, " the 
penalty of learning, and that each of these schol- 
ars whom you have met at S , though he were 

to be the last man, would, like the executioner in 
Hood's poem, guillotine the last but one ? " He 
added many lively remarks, but his evident ear- 
nestness engaged my attention, and, in the weeks 
that followed, we became better acquainted. He 
had good abilities, a genial temper, and no vices ; 
but he had one defect, — he could not speak in the 
tone of the people. There was some paralysis on 
his will, such that, when he met men on common 
terms, he spoke weakly, and from the point, like a 
flighty girl. His consciousness of the fault made it 



4 SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE 

worse. He envied every drover and lumberman 
in the tavern their manly speech. He coveted 
Mirabeau's don terrible de la familiarite, believing 
that he whose sympathy goes lowest is the man 
from whom kings have the most to fear. For him- 
self, he declared that he could not get enough alone 
to write a letter to a friend. He left the city ; he 
hid himself in pastures. The solitary river was 
not solitary enough ; the sun and moon put him 
out. When he bought a house, the first thing he 
did was to plant trees. He could not enough con- 
ceal himself. Set a hedge here; set oaks there, — 
trees behind trees ; above all, set evergreens, for 
they will keep a secret all the year round. The 
most agreeable compliment you could pay him was, 
to imply that you had not observed him in a house 
or a street where you had met him. Whilst he suf- 
fered at being seen where he was, he consoled him- 
self with the delicious thought of the inconceivable 
number of places where he was not. All he wished 
of his tailor was to provide that sober mean of 
color and cut which would never detain the eye 
for a moment. He went to Vienna, to Smyrna, to 
London. In all the variety of costumes, a carni- 
val, a kaleidoscope of clothes, to his horror he 
could never discover a man in the street who wore 
anything like his own dress. He would have given 
his soul for the ring of Gyges. His dismay at hia 
visibility had blunted the fears of mortality. " Do 



SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 5 

•yon think," he said, *'I am m such great terror of 
being shot, — I, who am only waiting to shuffle off 
my corporeal jacket, to slip away into the hack 
stars, and put diameters of the solar system and 
sidereal orbits between me and all souls, — there 
to wear out ages in solitude, and forget memory 
rtself, if it be possible ? " He had a remorse run- 
ning to despair, of his social gaucheries, and walked 
miles and miles to o-et the twitchino-s out of his face, 
the starts and shrugs out of his arms and shoulders. 
God may forgive sins, he said, but awkwardness 
has no foro-iveness in heaven or earth. He admired 
in Newton, not so much his theory of the moon, as 
his letter to Collins, in which he forbade him to 
insert his name with the solution of the problem in 
the " Philosophical Transactions " : " It would per- 
haps increase my acquaintance, the thing which I 
chiefly study to decline." 

These conversations led me somewhat later to 
the knowledo-e of similar cases, and to the dis- 
covery that they are not of very infrequent occur- 
rence. Few substances are found pure in nature. 
Those constitutions which can bear in open day 
the rough dealing of the world must be of that 
mean and average structure, — such as iron and 
salt, atmospheric air, and water. But there are 
metals, hke potassium and sodium, which, to be 
kept pure, must be kept under naphtha. Such are 
the talents determined on some specialty, which 



6 SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 

a culmlnatino: civilization fosters in the heart of 
great cities and in royal chambers. Nature pro- 
tects her own work. To the culture of the world, 
an Archimedes, a Newton is indispensable ; so she 
guards them by a certain aridity. If these had 
been good fellows, fond of dancing, port, and clubs, 
we should have had no " Theory of the Sphere," 
and no " Principia." They had that necessity of 
isolation which genius feels. Each must stand on 
his glass tripod, if he would keep his electricity. 
Even Swedenborg, whose theory of the universe 
is based on affection, and who reprobates to weari- 
ness the danger and vice of pure intellect, is con- 
strained to make an extraordinary exception : 
" There are also angels who do not live consoci- 
ated, but separate, house and house ; these dwell 
in the midst of heaven, because they are the best 
of angels." 

We have known many fine geniuses with that 
imperfection that they cannot do anything useful, 
not so much as write one clean sentence. 'T is 
worse, and tragic, that no man is fit for society 
who has fine traits. At a distance, he is admired ; 
but bring him hand to hand, he is a cripple. One 
protects himself by solitude, and one by couitesy, 
and one by an acid, worldly manner, — each con- 
ceallno; how he can the thinness of his skin and his 
incapacity for strict association. But there ig no 
remedy that can reach the heart of the disease, but 



SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 7 

either habits of self-reliance that should go in prac- 
tice to making the man independent of the Imman 
race, or else a religion of love. Now he hardly 
seems entitled to marry ; for how can he protect 
a woman, who cannot protect himself? 

We pray to be conventional. But the wary 
Heaven takes care you shall not be, if there is any- 
thing good in you. Dante was very bad company, 
and was never invited to dinner. Michel Angelo 
had a sad, sour time of it. The ministers of beauty 
are rarely beautiful in coaches and saloons. Colum- 
bus discovered no isle or key so lonely as himself. 
Yet each of these potentates saw well the reason 
of his exclusion. Solitary was he ? Why, yes ; 
but his society was limited only by the amount of 
brain Nature appropriated in that age to carry on 
the government of the world. " If I stay," said 
Dante, when there was question of going to 
Rome, "who will go? and if I go, who will 
stay ? " 

But the necessity of solitude is deeper than wo 
have said, and is organic. I have seen many a 
philosopher whose world is large enough for only 
one person. He affects to be a good companion : 
but we are still surprising his secret, that he means 
and needs to impose his system on all the rest. 
The determination of each is from all the others, 
like that of each tree up into free space. 'T is no 
wonder, when each has his whole head, our societies 



« SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 

should be so small. Like President Tyler, our 
party falls from us every day, and we must ride in 
a sulky at last. Dear heart ! take it sadly home to 
thee, — there is no co-operation. We begin with 
friendships, and all our youth is a reconnoitring 
and recruiting of the holy fraternity they shall com- 
bine for the salvation of men. But so the remoter 
stars seem a nebula of united light ; yet there is no 
group which a telescope will not resolve, and the 
dearest friends are separated by impassable gulfs. 
The co-operation is involuntary, and is put upon 
us by the Genius of Life, who reserves this as a 
part of his prerogative. 'T is fine for us to talk , 
we sit and muse, and are serene and complete ; 
but the moment we meet with anybody, each be- 
comes a fraction. 

Though the stuff of tragedy and of romances is in 
a moral union of two superior persons, whose confi- 
dence in each other for long years, out of sight, and 
in sight, and against all appearances, is at last justi- 
fied by victorious proof of probity to gods and men, 
causing joyful emotions, tears and glory, — though 
there be for heroes this moral union^ yet, they, too, 
are as far off as ever from an intellectual union, and 
the moral union is for comparatively low and exter 
nal purposes, like the co-operation of a ship's company 
or of a fire-club. But how insular and pathetically 
solitary are all the people we know ! Nor dare they 
tell what they think of each other, when they meet 



SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 9 

in the street. We have a fine right, to be sure, to 
taunt men of the world with superficial and treach- 
erous courtesies ! 

Sucli is the tragic necessity which strict science 
finds underneath our domestic and neighborly life, 
irresistibly driving each adult soul as with whips into 
the desert, and making our warm covenants senti- 
mental and momentary. We must infer that the 
ends of thought were peremptory, if they were to be 
secured at such ruinous cost. They are deeper than 
can be told, and belong to the immensities and eter- 
nities. They reach down to that depth where society 
itself originates and disappears, — where the ques- 
tion is. Which is first, man or men ? — where the 
individual is lost in his source. 

But this banishment to the rocks and echoes no 
metaphysics can make right or tolerable. This re- 
sult is so against nature, such a half- view, that it 
must be corrected by a common sense and experi- 
ence. " A man is born by the side of his father, 
and there he remains." A man must be clothed 
with society, or we shall feel a certain bareness and 
poverty, as of a displaced and unfurnished member. 
He is to be dressed in arts arid institutions, as well as 
in body-garments. Now and then a man exquisitely 
made can live alone, and must ; but coop up most 
men, and you undo them. '' Tlie king lived and 
ate in his hall with men, and understood men," said 
Selden. When a young barrister said to the late 



10 SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 

Mr. Mason, " I keep my chamber to read la^7, — 
" Read law ! " replied the veteran, " 't is in the court- 
room you must read law." Nor is the rule other- 
wise for literature. If you would learn to write, 
'tis in the street you must learn it. Both for the 
vehicle and for the aims of fine arts, you must fre- 
quent the public square. The people, and not the 
college, is the writer's home. A scholar is a candle 
which the love and desire of all men will light. 
Never his lands or his rents, but the power to charm 
the disguised soul that sits veiled under this bearded 
and that rosy visage is his rent and ration. His 
products are as needful as those of the baker or 
the weaver. Society cannot do without cultivated 
men. As soon as the first wants are satisfied, the 
higher wants become imperative. 

'Tis hard to mesmerize ourselves, to wdiip our 
ow^n top ; but through sympathy we are capable of 
energy and endurance. Concert fires people to a 
certain fury of performance they can rarely reach 
alone. Here is the use of society: it is so easy 
with the great to be great ; so easy to come up to 
an existing standard ; — as easy as it is to the lover 
to swim to his maiden through weaves so grim be- 
fore. The benefits of affection are immense ; and 
the one event which never loses its romance is the 
encounter with superior persons on terms allowing 
the happiest intercourse. 

It by no means follows that we are not fit for 



SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. H 

society, because soirees are tedious, and because 
the soiree finds us tedious. A backwoodsman, who 
had been sent to the university, told me that, when 
he heard the best-bred young men at the law-school 
talk together, he reckoned himself a boor ; but when- 
ever he caught them apart, and had one to himself 
alone, then they were the boors, and he the better 
man. And if we recall the rare hours when we en- 
countered the best persons, we then found ourselves, 
and then first society seemed to exist. That was 
society, though in the transom of a brig, or on the 
Florida Keys. 

A cold, slucrcfish blood thinks it has not facts 
enough to the purpose, and must decline its turn in 
the conversation. But they who speak have no 
more, — have less. 'T is not new facts that avails 
but the heat to dissolve everybody's facts. Heat 
puts you in right relation with magazines of facts. 
The capital defect of cold, arid natures is the w^ant 
of animal spirits. They seem a power incredible, 
as if God should raise the dead. The recluse wit- 
nesses what others perform by their aid, with a kind 
of fear. It is as much out of his possibility as the 
prowess of Coeur-de-Lion, or an Irishman's day's- 
work on the railroad. 'T is said, the present and 
the future are always rivals. Animal spirits con- 
stitute the power of the present, and their feats are 
like the structure of a pyramid. Their result is a 
lord, a general, or a boon companion. Before these, 



12 SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 

what a base mendicant is Memory with his leathern 
badixe ! But this 2;enial heat is latent in all consti- 
tutions, and is disengaged only by the friction of 
society. As Bacon said of manners, " To obtain 
them, it only needs not to despise them," so we say 
of animal spirits, that they are the spontaneous pro- 
duct of health and of a social habit. " For behavior, 
men learn it, as they take diseases, one of another." 

But the people are to be taken in very small 
doses. If solitude is proud, so is society vulgar. 
In society, high advantages are set down to the in- 
dividual as disqualifications. We sink as easily as 
we rise, through sympathy. So many men whom I 
know are degraded by their sympathies, their native 
aims being high enough, but their relation all too 
tender to the gross people about them. Men can- 
not afford to live together on their merits, and tney 
adjust themselves by their demerits, — by their 
love of gossip, or by sheer tolerance and animal 
good-nature. They untune and dissipate the brave 
aspirant. 

The remedy is, to reinforce each of these moods 
from the other. Conversation will not corrupt us, 
if we come to the assembly in our own garb and 
speech, and with the energy of health to select 
what is ours and reject what is not. Society we 
must have ; but let it be society, and not exchan- 
ging news, or eating from the same dish. Is it soci- 
ety to sit in one of your chairs ? I cannot go to the 



SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 13 

houses of my nearest relatives, because I do not 
wish to be alone. Society exists by chemical affinity, 
and not otherwise. 

Put any company of people together with freedom 
for conversation, and a rapid self-distribution takes 
place, into sets and pairs. The best are accused of 
exclusiveness. It would be more true to say, they 
separate as oil from water, as children from old 
people, without love or hatred in the matter, each 
seeking his like ; and any interference with the 
affinities would produce constraint and suffiDcation. 
All conversation is a magnetic experiment. I know 
that my friend can talk eloquently ; you know that 
he cannot articulate a sentence : we have seen him 
in different company. Assort your party, or invite 
none. Put Stubbs and Coleridge, Quintilian and 
Aunt Miriam, into pairs, and you make them all 
wretched. 'T is an extempore Sing-Sing built in a 
parlor. Leave them to seek their own mates, and 
they will be as merry as sparrows. 

A higher civility will re-establish in our customs 
a certain reverence which we have lost. What to 
do with these brisk young men who break through 
all fences, and make themselves at home in every 
house ? I find out in an instant if my companion 
does not want me, and ropes cannot hold me when 
my welcome is gone. One would think that the 
affinities would pronounce themselves with a surer 
reciprocity. 



14 SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 

Here again, as so often, Nature delights to put us 
between extreme antagonisms, and our safety is 
in the skill with which we keep the diagonal line. 
Solitude is impracticable, and society fatal. We 
must keep our head in the one and our hands in 
tlie other. The conditions are met, if we keep our 
independence, yet do not lose our sympathy. These 
wonderful horses need to be driven by fine hands. 
We require such a solitude as shall hold us to its 
revelations when we are in the street and in palaces ; 
for most men are cowed in society, and say good 
things to you in private, but will not stand to them 
in public. But let us not be the victims of words. 
Society and solitude are deceptive names. It is not 
the circumstance of seeing more or fewer people, 
but the readiness of sympathy, that imports ; and a 
sound mind w^ill derive its principles from insight, 
with ever a purer ascent to the sufficient and abso- 
hite rights and will accept society as the natural 
'element in which they are to be applied. 



CIVILIZATION 



CIVILIZATION. 

A CERTAIN degree of progress from the rudest 
state in which man is found, — a dweller in caves, 
or on trees, like an ape, — a cannibal, and eater of 
pounded snails, worms, and offal, — a certain de- 
gree of progress from this extreme is called Civili- 
zation. It is a vague, complex name, of many- 
degrees. Nobody has attempted a definition. Mr. 
Guizot, writing a book on the subject, does not. It 
implies the evolution of a highly organized man, 
brought to supreme delicacy of sentiment, as in 
practical power, religion, liberty, sense of honor, 
and taste. In the hesitation to define what it is, 
we usually suggest it by negations. A nation that 
has no clothing, no iron, no alphabet, no marriage, 
no arts of peace, no abstract thought, we call bar- 
barous. And after many arts are invented or im- 
ported, as among the Turks and Moorish nations, 
it is often a little complaisant to call them civil- 
ized. 

Each nation grows after its own genius, and has 
a civilization of its own. The Chinese and Japan- 
ese, though each complete in his way, is different 



18 CIVILIZATION. 

from the man of Madrid or the man of New York. 
The term imports a mysterious progress. In the 
brutes is none ; and in mankind to-day the savage 
tribes are gradually extinguished rather than civil- 
ized. The Indians of this country have not learned 
the white man's work ; and in Africa, the negro of 
to-day is the negro of Herodotus. In other races 
the growth is not arrested; but the like progress 
that is made by a boy " when he cuts his eye- 
teeth," as we say, — childish illusions passing daily 
away, and he seeing things really and comprehen- 
sively, — is made by tribes. It is the learning the 
secret of cumulative power, of advancing on one's 
self. It implies a facility of association, power to 
compare, the ceasing from fixed ideas. The Indian 
is gloomy and distressed when urged to depart from 
his habits and traditions. He is overpowered by 
the gaze of the white, and his eye sinks. The oc- 
casion of one of these starts of growth is always 
some novelty that astounds the mind, and provokes 
it to dare to change. Thus there is a Cadmus, a 
Pytheas, a Manco Capac at the beginning of each 
improvement, — some superior foreigner importing 
new and wonderful arts, and tea^,hing them. Of 
course, he must not know too muwh, but must have 
the sympathy, language, and ^^ods of those he 
would inform. But chiefly the soa-shore has been 
the point of departure to knovviedge, as to com- 
merce. The most advanced motions are always 



CIVILIZATION. 19 

those who navigate the most. The power which 
the sea requires in the sailor makes a man of him 
very fast, and the change of shores and popula- 
tion clears his head of much nonsense of his wig- 
wam. 

Where shall we begin or end the list of those 
feats of liberty and wit, each of which feats made 
an epoch of history ? Thus, the effect of a framed 
or stone house is immense on the tranquillity, power, 
and refinement of the builder. A man in a cave 
or in a camp, a nomad, will die with no more estate 
than the wolf or the horse leaves. But so simple 
a labor as a house being achieved, his chief enemies 
are kept at bay. He is safe from the teeth of wild 
animals, from frost, sun-stroke, and weather ; and 
fine faculties begin to yield their fine harvest. In- 
vention and art are born, manners and social beauty 
and delight. 'T is wonderful how soon a piano 
gets into a log-hut on the frontier. You would 
think they found it under a pine-stump. With it 
comes a Latin grammar, — and one of those tow- 
head boys has written a hymn on Sunday. Now 
let colleges, now let senates take heed ! for here is 
one who, opening these fine tastes on the basis of 
the pioneer's iron constitution, will gather all their 
laurels in his strong hands. 

When the Indian trail gets widened, graded, 
and bri<lged to a good road, there is a benefactor, 
there is a missionary, a pacificator, a wealth-bringer, 



20 CIVILIZATION. 

a maker of markets, a vent for industry. Anothei* 
step in civility is the change from war, hunting, and 
pasturage to agriculture. Our Scandinavian fore- 
fathers have left us a significant legend to convey 
their sense of the importance of this step. " There 
was once a giantess who had a daughter, and the 
child saw a husbandman ploughing in the field. 
Then she ran and picked him up with her finger and 
thumb, and put him and his plough and his oxen 
into her apron, and carried them to her mother, and 
said, ' Mother, what sort of a beetle is this that 1 
found wrigdins in the sand ? ' But the mother 
said, ' Put it away, my child ; we must begone out 
of this land, for these people will dwell in it.' " 
Another success is the post-office, with its educating 
energy augmented by cheapness and guarded by a 
certain religious sentiment in mankind ; so that the 
power of a wafer or a drop of wax or gluten to guard 
a letter, as it flies over sea, over land, and comes to 
its address as if a battalion of artillery brought it, 1 
look upon as a fine metre of civilization. 

The division of labor, the multiplication of the 
arts of peace, which is nothing but a large allowance 
to each man to choose his work according to his fac- 
ulty, — to live by his better hand, — fills the State 
with useful and happy laborers ; and they, creating 
demand by the very temptation of their productions, 
are rapidly and surely rewarded by good sale : and 
what a police and ten commandments their work 



CIVILIZATION. 21 

thus becomes. So true is Dr. Johnson's remark 
that " men are seldom more innocently employed 
than when they are making money." 

The skilful combinations of civil government, 
though they usually follow natural leadings, as the 
lines of race, language, religion, and territory, yet 
require wisdom and conduct in the rulers, and in 
their result delight the imagination. " We see in- 
surmountable multitudes obeying, in opposition to 
their strongest passions, the restraints of a power 
which they scarcely perceive, and the crimes of a 
single individual marked and punished at the dis- 
tance of half the earth." * 

Right position of woman in the State is another 
index. Poverty and industry with a healthy mind 
read very easily the laws oP humanity, and love 
them : place the sexes in right relations of mutual 
respect, and a severe morality gives that essential 
charm to woman which educates all that is delicate, 
poetic, and self-sacrificing, breeds courtesy and 
learning, conversation and wit, in her rough mate ; 
so that I have thought a sufficient measure of civil- 
ization is the influence of good women. 

Another measure of culture is the diffusion of 
knowledge, overrunning all the old barriers of caste, 
and, by the cheap press, bringing the university to 
every poor man's door in the newsboy's basket. 
Scraps of science, of thought, of poetry are in the 

* Dr. Thomas Brown. 



22 CIVILIZATION. 

coarsest sheet, so that in every house we hesitate to 
burn a newspaper until we have looked it through. 
The ship, in its latest complete equipment, is an 
abridgment and compend of a nation's arts : the ship 
steered by compass and chart, — longitude reckoned 
by lunar observation and by chronometer, — driven 
by steam ; and in wildest sea-mountains, at vast dis- 
tances from home, 

" The pulses of her iron heart 
Go beating through the storm." 

No use can lessen the wonder of this control, by so 
weak a creature, offerees so prodigious. I remem- 
ber I watched, in crossing the sea, the beautiful 
skill whereby the engine in its constant working was 
made to produce two hundred gallons of fresh water 
out of salt-water, every hour, — thereby supplying 
all the ship's want. 

The skill that pervades complex details ; the man 
that maintains himself; the chimney taught to burn 
its own smoke ; the farm made to produce all that is 
consumed on it ; the very prison compelled to main- 
tain itself and yield a revenue, and, better still, made 
a reform school, and a manufactory of honest men 
out of rogues, as the steamer made fresh water out 
of salt, — all these are examples of that tendency to 
combine antagonisms, and utilize evil, which is the 
index of hio-h civilization. 

Civilization is the result of highly complex organ- 
ization. In the snake, all the organs are sheathed ; 



CIVILIZATION. 23 

no bands, no feet, no fins, no wings. In bird and 
beast, the organs are released, and begin to play. 
In man, they are all unbound, and full of joyful 
action. With this unswaddling he receives the ab- 
solute illumination we call Reason, and thereby true 
liberty. 

Climate has much to do with this mehoration. 
The highest civility has never loved the hot zones. 
Wherever snow falls, there is usually civil freedom. 
Where the banana grows, the animal system is indo- 
lent and pampered at the cost of higher qualities : 
the man is sensual and cruel. But this scale is not 
invariable. High degrees of moral sentiment con- 
trol the unfavorable influences of climate ; and some 
of our grandest examples of men and of races come 
from the equatorial regions, — as the genius of 
Egypt, of India, and of Arabia. 

These feats are measures or traits of civility ; and 
temperate climate is an important influence, though 
not quite indispensable, for there have been learning, 
philosophy, and art in Iceland, and in the tropics. 
But one condition is essential to the social educa- 
tion of man, namely, morality. There can be no 
high civility without a deep morality, though it may 
not always call itself by that name, but sometimes 
the point of honor, as in the institution of chivalry ; 
or patriotism, as in the Spartan and Roman repub- 
lics ; or the enthusiasm of some religious sect which 
imputes its virtue to its dogma ; or the cabalism, or 



24 CIVILIZATION. 

esprit de corps, of a masonic or other association of 
friends. 

The evolution of a highly-destined society must 
be moral ; it must run in the grooves of the celestial 
wheels. It must be catholic in aims. What is 
morale It is the respecting in action catholic or 
universal ends. Hear the definition which Kant 
gives of moral conduct : " Act always so that the 
immediate motive of thy will may become a univer- 
sal rule for all intelligent beings." 

Civilization depends on morality. Everything 
good in man leans on what is higher. This rule 
holds in small as in great. Thus, all our strength 
and success in the work of our hands depend on our 
borrowing the aid of the elements. You have seen 
a carpenter on a ladder with a broad-axe chopping 
upward chips from a beam. How awkward ! at 
what disadvanta2;e he works ! But see him on the 
ground, dressing his timber under him. Now, not 
his feeble muscles, but the force of gravity brings 
down the axe ; that is to say, the planet itself splits 
his stick. The farmer had much ill-temper^ lazi- 
ness, and shirking to endure from his hand-sawyers, 
until one day he bethought him to put his saw-mill 
on the edge of a waterfall ; and the river never tires 
of turning his wheel : the river is good- natured, 
and never hints an objection. 

We had letters to send ; couriers could not go 
fast enough, nor far enough ; broke their wagons, 



CIVILIZATION. 25 

foundered their horses ; bad roads in spring, snow- 
drifts in winter, heats in summer ; could not get the 
horses out of a walk. But we found out that the 
air and earth were full of Electricity; and always 
going our way, — just the way we wanted to 
send. Would he take a message ? Just as lief as 
not ; had nothing else to do ; would carry it in no 
time. Only one doubt occurred, one staggering ob- 
jection, — he had no carpet-bag, no visible pockets, 
no hands, not so much as a mouth, to carry a letter. 
But, after much thought and many experiments, we 
managed to meet the conditions, and to fold up the 
letter in such invisible compact form as he could 
carry in those invisible pockets of his, never wrought 
by needle and thread, — and it went like a charm. 

I admire still more than the saw-mill the skill 
which, on the sea-shore, makes the tides drive the 
wheels and grind corn, and which thus engages the 
assistance of the moon, like a hired hand, to grind, 
and wind, and pump, and saw, and split stone, and 
roll iron. 

Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every in- 
stance of his labor, to hitch his wagon to a star, 
and see his chore done by the gods themselves. 
That is the way we are strong, by borrowing the 
might of the elements. The forces of steam, grav- 
ity, galvanism, light, magnets, wind, fire, serve u3 
iay by day, and cost us nothing. 

Our astr^nom^^ is full of examples of calling in 



26 CIVILIZATION. 

the aid of these magnificent helpers. Thus, on a 
planet so small as ours, the want of an adequate 
base for astronomical measurements is early felt, as, 
for example, in detecting the parallax of a star. 
But the astronomer, having by an observation fixed 
the place of a star, by so simple an expedient as 
waiting six months, and then repeating his obser- 
vation, contrived to put the diameter of the earth's 
orbit, say two hundred millions of miles, between 
his first observation and his second, and this line 
afforded him a respectable base for his triangle. 

All our arts aim to win this vantage. We can- 
not bring the heavenly powers to us, but, if we will 
only choose our jobs in directions in w^hich they 
travel, they will undertake them with the greatest 
pleasure. It is a peremptory rule with them, that 
they never go out of their road. We are dapper lit- 
tle busybodies, and run this way and that way 
superserviceably ; but they swerve never from their 
foreordained paths, — neither the sun, nor the 
moon, nor a bubble of air, nor a mote of dust. 

And as our handiworks borrow the elements, so 
all our social and political action leans on princi 
pies. To accomplish anything excellent, the will 
must work for catholic and universal ends. A 
puny creature walled in on every side, as Daniel 
WTote, — 

" Unless above himself he can 
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man ! " 



CIVILIZATION. 27 

but wlien his will leans on a principle, when he ig 
the vehicle of ideas, he borrows their omnipotence. 
Gibraltar may be strong, but ideas are impregnable, 
and bestow on the hero their invincibility. " It 
was a ci^eat instruction," said a saint in Cromwell's 
war, " that the best courao;es are but beams of the 
Almighty." Hitch your wagon to a star. Let us 
not fag in paltry works which serve our pot and 
bag alone. Let us not lie and steal. No god will 
help. We shall find all their teams going the other 
way, — Charles's Wain, Great Bear, Orion, Leo, 
Hercules : every god will leave us. Work rather 
for those interests which the divinities honor and 
promote, — justice, love, freedom, knowledge, util- 

If we can thus ride in Olympian chariots by put- 
ting our works in the path of the celestial circuits, 
we can harness also evil agents, the powers of dark- 
ness, and force them to serve against their will the 
ends of wisdom and virtue. Thus, a wise govern- 
ment puts fines and penalties on pleasant vices. 
What a benefit would the American government, 
not yet relieved of its extreme need, render to it- 
scif, and to every city, village, and hamlet in the 
States, if it would tax whiskey and rum almost to 
the point of prohibition ! Was it Bonaparte who 
said that he found vices very good patriots ? — " he 
got five millions from the love of brandy, and he 
should be glad to know which of the virtues would 



28 CIVILIZATION. 

pay him as much." Tobacco and opium have 
broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of 
armies, if you choose to make them pay high for 
such joy as they give and such harm as they do. 

These are traits, and measures, and modes ; and 
the true test of civilization is, not the census, nor 
the size of cities, nor the crops, — no, but the kind 
of man the country turns out. I see the vast ad- 
vantages of this country, spanning the breadth of 
the temperate zone. I see the immense material 
prosperity, — towns on towns, states on states, and 
wealth piled in the massive architecture of cities ; 
California quartz-mountains dumped down in New 
York to be replied architecturally along-shore from 
Canada to Cuba, and thence westward to California 
again. But it is not New York streets built by the 
confluence of workmen and wealth of all nations, 
though stretching out towards Philadelphia until 
they touch it, and northward until they touch New 
Haven, Hartford, Springfield, Worcester, and Bos- 
ton, — not these that make the real estimation. 
But, when I look over this constellation of cities 
which animate and illustrate the land, and see how 
little the government has to do with their daily 
life, how self-helped and self-directed all families are, 
— knots of men in purely natural societies, — so 
cieties of trade, of kindred blood, of habitual hos- 
pitality, house and house, man acting on man by 
weight of opinion, of longer or better-directed in- 



CIVILIZATION. 29 

dustry, the refining influence of women, the invi- 
tation which experience and permanent causes open 
to youth and labor, — when I see how much each 
virtuous and gifted person, whom all men consider, 
lives affectionately with scores of excellent people 
who are not known far from home, and perhaps 
with great reason reckons these people his supe- 
riors in virtue, and in the symmetry and force of 
their qualities, I see what cubic values America 
has, and in these a better certificate of civilization 
than great cities or enormous wealth. 

In strictness, the vital refinements are the moral 
and intellectual steps. The appearance of the 
Hebrew Moses, of the Indian Buddh, — in Greece, 
of the Seven Wise Masters, of the acute and up- 
right Socrates, and of the Stoic Zeno, — in Judoea, 
the advent of Jesus, — and in modern Christen- 
dom, of the realists Huss, Savonarola, and Luther, 
are causal facts which carry forward races to new 
convictions, and elevate the rule of life. In the 
presence of these agencies, it is frivolous to insist 
on the invention of printing or gunpowder, of 
steam-power or gas-light, percussion-caps and rub- 
ber-shoes, which are toys thrown off from that 
security, freedom, and exhilaration which a healthy 
morality creates in society. These arts add a com- 
fort and smoothness to house and street life ; but a 
purer morality, which kindles genius, civilizes civil- 
ization, casts backward all that we held sacred into 



80 CIVILIZATION. 

the profajie, as the flame of oil throws a shadow 
when shined upon by the flame of the Bude-hght. 
Not the less the popular measures of progress will 
ever be the arts and the laws. 

But if there be a country which cannot stand 
any one of these tests, — a country where knowl- 
edge cannot be diffused without perils of mob-law 
and statute-law, — where speech is not free, — 
where the post-office is violated, mail-bags opened, 
and letters tampered with, — where public debts and 
private debts outside of the State are repudiated, 
— where liberty is attacked in the primary insti- 
tution of social life, — where the position of the 
white woman is injuriously affected by the out- 
lawry of the black woman, — where the arts, such 
as they have, are all imported, having no indigenous 
life, — where the laborer is not secured in the earn- 
ings of his own hands, — where suffrage is not free 
or equal, — that country is, in all these respects, 
not civil, but barbarous ; and no advantages of soil, 
climate, or coast can resist these suicidal mischiefs. 

Morality and all the incidents of morality are 
essential ; as, justice to the citizen, and personal 
liberty. Montesquieu says : " Countries are well 
cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are 
free " ; and the remark holds not less but more 
true of the culture of men, than of the tillage of 
land. And the highest proof of civility is, that 
the whole public action of the State is directed 'on 
securing the greatest good of the greatest number. 



ART. 



AET. 

All departments of life at the present day, — 
Trade, Politics, Letters, Science, or Religion,-^ 
seem to feel, and to labor to express, the identity of 
their law. They are rays of one sun; they translate 
each into a new language the sense of the other. 
They are sublime when seen as emanations of a 
Necessity contradistinguished from the vulgar Fate, 
by being instant and alive, and dissolving man, as 
well as his works, in its flowing beneficence. This 
influence is conspicuously visible in the principles 
and history of Art. 

On one side in primary communication with 
absolute truth through thought and instinct, the 
human mind on the other side tends, by an equal 
necessity, to the publication and embodiment of 
its thought, modified and dwarfed by the impurity 
and untruth which, in all our experience, injure the 
individuality through which it passes. The child 
not only suffers, but cries ; not only hungers, but 
eats. The man not only thmks, but speaks and acts. 
Every thought that arises in the mind, in its rising 
aims to pass out of the mind into act ; just as every 



34 ART. 

plant, in the moment of germination, struggles up 
to lio-lit. Thouo;ht is the seed of action ; but action 
is as much its second form as tbouglit is its first. 
It rises in thought, to the end that it may bo uttered 
and acted. The more profound the thought, the 
more burdensome. Always in proportion to the 
depth of its sense does it knock importunately at 
the gates of the soul, to be spoken, to be done. 
What is in, will out. It struggles to the birth. 
Speech is a great pleasure, and action a great pleas- 
ure ; they cannot be foreborne. 

The utterance of thought and emotion in speech 
and action may be conscious or unconscious. The 
sucking child is an unconscious actor. The man in 
an ecstasy of fear or anger is an unconscious actor. 
A large part of our habitual actions are uncon- 
sciously done, and most of our necessary words are 
unconsciously said. 

The conscious utterance of thought, by speech 
or action, to any end, is Art. From the first imi- 
tative babble of a child to the despotism of elo- 
quence, from his first pile of toys or chip bridge 
to the masonr}^ of Minot Rock Light-house or the 
Pacific Railroad, from the tattooing of the Owhy- 
hees to the Vatican Gallery, from the simplest ex- 
pedient of private prudence to the American Con- 
stitution, from its first to its last works. Art is the 
spirit's voluntary use and combination of things to 
serve its end. The Will distinguishes it as spu'it 



ART. 35 

nal action. Relatively to themselves, the bee, the 
bird, the beaver, have no art; for what they do, 
they do instinctively ; but relatively to the Supreme 
Being, they have. And the same is true of all un- 
conscious action : relatively to the doer, it is instinct ; 
relati\ely to the First Cause, it is Art. In this 
sense, recognizing the Spirit which informs Nature, 
Plato rightly said, " Those things which are said to 
be done by Nature are indeed done by Divine Art.'* 
Art, universally, is the spirit creative. It w^as de- 
fined by Aristotle, " The reason of the thing, with- 
out the matter." 

If we follow the popular distinction of works 
according to their aim, we should say, the Spirit, in 
its creation, aims at use or at beauty, and hence 
Art divides itself into the Useful and the Fine 
Arts. 

The useful arts comprehend not only those that 
lie next to instinct, as agriculture, building, weav- 
ing, &c., but also navigation, practical chemistry, 
and the construction of all the grand and delicate 
tools and instruments by which man serves himself: 
as language, the watch, the ship, the decimal cipher ; 
and also the sciences, so far as they are made ser- 
viceable to political economy. 

When we reflect on the pleasure we receive from 
a ship, a railroad, a dry-dock ; or from a picture, a 
dramatic representation, a statue, a poem, we find 
that these have not a quite simple, but a blended 



36 ART. 

origin. We find that the question, "What is Art? 
leads us directly to another, — Who is the artist? 
and the solution of this is the key to the history of 
Art. 

I hasten to state the principle which prescribes, 
through different means, its firm law to the useful 
and the beautiful arts. The law is this. The uni- 
versal soul is the alone creator of the useful and 
the beautiful ; therefore, to make anything useful or 
beautiful, the individual must be submitted to the 
universal mind. 

In the first place, let us consider this in reference 
to the useful arts. Here the omnipotent agent is 
Nature ; all human acts are satellites to her orb. 
Nature is the representative of the universal mind, 
and the law becomes this, — that Art must be a 
complement to nature, strictly subsidiary. It was 
said, in allusion to the great structures of the an- 
cient Romans, — the aqueducts and bridges, — that 
" their Art was a Nature working to municipal 
en is." That is a true account of all just works 
of useful art. Smeaton built Eddystone Light-house 
on the model of an oak-tree, as being the form in 
nature best designed to resist a constant assailing 
force. Dollond formed his achromatic telescope on 
the model of the human eye. Duhamel built a 
bridge by letting in a piece of stronger timber for 
the middle of the under surface, getting his hint 
from the structure of the shin-bone. 



ART. 37 

The first and last lesson of the useful arts is, that 
Nature tyrannizes over our works. They must be 
conformed to her law, or they will be ground to 
powder by her omnipresent activity. Nothing droll, 
notlilng whimsical will endure. Nature is ever in- 
terfering with Art. You cannot build your house 
or pagoda as you will, but as you must. There is 
a quick bound set to your caprice. The leaning 
tower can only lean so far. The verandah or 
pagoda roof can curve upward only to a certain 
point. The slope of your roof is determined by 
the weight of snow. It is only within narrow 
limits that the discretion of the architect may 
range : gravity, wind, son, rain, the size of men 
and animals, and such like, have more to say than 
he. It is the law of fluids that prescribes the 
shape of the boat, — keel, rudder, and bows, — 
and, in the finer fluid above, the form and tackle 
of the sails. Man seems to have no option about 
his tools, but merely the necessity to learn from 
Nature what will fit best, as if he were fitting a 
screw or a door. Beneath a necessity thus al- 
mighty, what is artificial in man's life seems insig- 
Tiificant. He seems to take his task so minutely 
from intimations of Nature, that his works become 
as it were hers, and he is no longer free. 

But if we work within this limit, she yields us 
all her strength. All powerful action is performed 
by bringing the forces of nature to bear upon our 



38 ART 

objects. We do not grind corn or lift the loom b;^ 
our OAvn strength, but we build a mill in such 
position as to set the north wind to play upon our 
instrument, or the elastic force of steam, or the ebb 
and flow of the sea. So m our handiwork, we do 
few things by muscular force, but we place our- 
selves in such attitudes as to bring the force of 
gravity, that is, the weight of the planet, to bear 
upon the spade or the axe we wield. In short, ir 
all our operations we seek not to use our own, but 
to bring a quite infinite force to bear. 

Let us now consider this law as it affects the 
works that have beauty for their end, that is, the 
productions of the Fine Arts. Here again the 
prominent fact is subordination of man. His art 
is the least part of his work of art. A great deduc- 
tion is to be made before we can know his proper 
contribution to it. 

Music, Eloquence, Poetry, Painting, Sculpture, 
Architecture. This is a rough enumeration of the 
Fine Arts. I omit Rhetoric, which only respects 
the form of eloquence and poetry. Architecture 
and eloquence are mixed arts, whose end is some- 
times beauty and sometimes use. 

It will be seen that in each of these arts there is 
much which is not spiritual. Each has a material 
basis, and in each the creating intellect is crippled 
in some degree by the stuff on which it works. 
The basis of poetry is language, which is material 



ART. 39 

only on one side. It is a demi-god. But being 
applied primarily to the common necessities of 
man, it is not new-created by the poet for his own 
ends. 

The basis of music is the qualities of the air and 
the vibrations of sonorous bodies. The pulsation 
of a stretched string or wire gives the ear the 
pleasure of sweet sound, before yet the musician 
has enhanced this pleasure by concords and com- 
binations. 

Eloquence, as far as it is a fine art, is modified 
how much by the material organization of the 
orator, the tone of the voice, the physical strength, 
the play of the eye and countenance. All this is so 
much deduction from the purely spiritual pleasure, 
— as so much deduction from the merit of Art, — 
and is the attribute of Nature. 

In painting, bright colors stimulate the eye, before 
yet they are harmonized into a landscape. In 
sculpture and in architecture the material, as mar- 
ble or granite, and in architecture the mass, are 
sources of great pleasure, quite independent of 
the artificial arrangement. The art resides in the 
model, in the plan ; for it is on that the genius of 
the artist is expended, not on the statue or the 
temple. Just as much better as is the polished 
statue of dazzling marble than the clay model, or 
as much more impressive as is the granite cathedral 
or pyramid than the ground-plan or profile of them 



40 ART. 

on paper, so much more beauty owe they to Nature 
than to Art. 

There is a still larger deduction to be made from 
the genius of the artist in favor of Nature than I 
have yet specified. 

A jumble of musical sounds on a viol or a flute, in 
which the rhythm of the tune is played without one 
of the notes being right, gives pleasure to the un- 
skilful ear. A very coarse imitation of the human 
form on canvas, or in wax-work, — a coarse sketch 
in colors of a landscape, in which imitation is all 
that is attempted, — these things give to unprac- 
tised eyes, to the uncultured, who do not ask a 
fine spiritual delight, almost as much pleasure as a 
statue of Canova or a picture of Titian. 

And in the statue of Canova, or the picture of 
Titian, these give the great part of the pleasure ; 
they are the basis on which the fine spirit rears 
a higher delight, but to which these are indispen- 
sable. 

Another deduction from the genius of the artist 
is what is conventional in his art, of which there is 
much in every work of art. Thus how much is 
there that is not original in every particular build- 
ing, in every statue, in every tune, painting, poem, 
or harangue ! — whatever is national or usual ; as 
the usao;e of buildino" all Roman churches in the form 
of a cross, the prescribed distribution of parts of a 
theatre, the custom of draping a statue in classica* 



ART. 41 

costume. Yet who will deny that the merely con- 
ventional part of the performance contributes much 
to its effect ? 

One consideration more exhausts, I believe, all 
the deductions from the genius of the artist in any 
given work. This is the adventitious. Thus the 
pleasure that a noble temple gives us is only in part 
owing to the temple. It is exalted by the beauty 
of sunlight, the play of the clouds, the landscape 
around it, its grouping with the houses, trees, and 
towers in its vicinity. The pleasure of eloquence 
is in greatest part owing often to the stimulus of 
the occasion which produces it, — to the magic of 
sympathy, which exalts the feeling of each by 
radiatinor on him the feelino; of all. 

The effect of music belongs how much to the 
place, — as the church, or the moonlight walk; or 
to the company ; or, if on the stage, to what went 
before in the play, or to the expectation of what 
shall come after. 

In poetry, " It is tradition more than invention 
that helps the poet to a good fable." The adven- 
titious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater 
delight which a verse gives in happy quotation than 
in the poem. 

It is a curious proof of our conviction that the 
artist does not feel himself to be the parent of his 
work, and is as much surprised at the effect as we, 
that we are so unwilling to impute our best sense of 



42 ART. 

any work of art to the author. The highest praise 
we can attribute to any writer, painter, sculptor, 
builder, is, that he actually possessed the thought or 
feeling v>'ith which he has inspired us. We hesitate 
at doing Spenser so great an honor as to think that 
he intended by his allegory the sense we affix to it. 
We grudge to Homer the wide human circumspec- 
tion his commentators ascribe to him. Even Shak- 
speare, of whom we can believe everything, we 
think indebted to Goethe and to Coleridge for the 
wisdom they detect in his Hamlet and Antony, 
Especially have we this infirmity of faith in con- 
temporary genius. We fear that Allston and 
Greenough did not foresee and design all the effect 
they produce on us. 

Our arts are happy hits. We are like the 
musician on the lake, whose melody is sweeter than 
he knows, or like a traveller, surprised by a moun- 
tain echo, whose trivial word returns to him in ro- 
mantic thunders. 

In view of these facts, I say that the power of 
Nature predominates over the human will in all 
works of even the fine arts, in all that respects their 
material and external circumstances. Nature paints 
the best part of the picture ; carves the best part 
of the statue ; builds the best part of the house ; 
and speaks the best part of the oration. For all 
the advantaf^es to which I have adverted are such 
as the artist did not consciously produce. He relied 



ART. 43 

on their aid, he put himself in the way to receive 
aid from some of them ; but he saw that his planting 
and his waterino; waited for the sunlio-ht of Nature, 
or were vain. 

Let us proceed to the consideration of the law 
stated in the beginning of this essay, as it affects the 
purely spiritual part of a work of art. 

As, in useful art, so fixr as it is useful, the work 
must be strictly subordinated to the laws of Nature, 
so as to become a sort of continuation, and in no 
wise a contradiction of Nature ; so, in art that aims 
at beauty, must the parts be subordinated to Ideal 
Nature, and everything individual abstracted, so 
that it shall be the production of the universal 
soul. 

The artist who is to produce a w^ork which is to 
be admired, not by his friends or his townspeople or 
his contemporaries, but by all men, and which is 
to be more beautiful to the eye in proportion to its 
culture, must disindividualize himself, and be a man 
of no party, and no manner, and no age, but one 
through whom the soul of all men circulates, as the 
common air tlu'ough his lungs. He must work in 
the spirit in which we conceive a prophet to speak, 
or an angel of the Lord to act ; that is, he is not to 
speak his own w^ords, or do his own works, or think 
his own thoughts, but he is to be an organ through 
which the universal mind acts. 

In speaking of the useful arts, I pointed to the fact 



44 ART. 

that we do not dig, or grind, or hew, by onr muscu- 
lar strength, but by bringing the weight of the 
planet to bear on the spade, axe, or bar. Precisely 
analogous to this, in the fine arts, is the manner of 
our intellectual work. We aim to hinder our indi- 
viduality from acting. So much as we can shove 
aside our egotism, our prejudice, and will, and bring 
the omniscience of reason upon the subject before 
us, so perfect is the work. The wonders of Shak- 
speare are things which he saw whilst he stood 
aside, and then returned to record them. The 
poet aims at getting observations without aim ; to 
subject to thought things seen without (voluntary) 
thought. 

In eloquence, the great triumphs of the art are, 
when the orator is lifted above himself; when con- 
sciously he makes himself the mere tongue of the 
occasion and the hour, and says what cannot but be 
said. Hence the term abandonment, to describe the 
self-surrender of the orator. Not his will, but the 
principle on which he is horsed, the great connec- 
tion and crisis of events, thunder in the ear of the 
crowd. 

In poetry, where every word is free, every word 
is necessary. Good poetry could not have been 
otherwise written than it is. The first time you 
hear it, it sounds ratlier as if copied out of some 
invisible tablet in the Eternal mind, than as if arbi- 
trarily composed by the poet. The feeling of all 



ART. 45 

great poets has accorded with this. They found 
the verse, not made it. The muse brought it to 
them. 

In sculpture, did ever anybody call the Apollo a 
fancy piece ? Or say of the Laocoon how it might 
be made different ? A masterpiece of art has in the 
mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much 
as a plant or a crystal. 

The whole language of men, especially of artists, 
in reference to this subject, points at the belief that 
every work of art, in proportion to its excellence, 
partakes of the precision of fate : no room was there 
for choice, no play for fancy ; for in the moment, 
or in the successive moments, when that form was 
seen, the iron lids of Reason were unclosed, which 
ordinarily are heavy with slumber. The individual 
mind became for the moment the vent of the mind 
of humanity. 

There is but one Reason. The mind that made 
the world is not one mind, but the mind. Every 
man is an inlet to the same, and to all of the same. 
And every work of art is a more or less pure mani- 
festation of the same. Therefore we arrive at this 
conclusion, which I offer as a confirmation of the 
whole view, that the delight which a work of art 
affords, seems to arise from our recoo-nizino; in it 
the mind that formed Nature, again in active opera- 
tion. 

It differs from the works of Nature in this, that 



46 ART. 

tliey are organically reproductive. This is not ; but 
spiritually it is prolific by its powerful action on the 
intellects of men. 

Hence it follows that a study of admirable works 
of art sharpens our perceptions of the beauty of 
Nature ; that a certain analogy reigns throughout 
the wonders of both ; that the contemplation of a 
work of great art draws us into a state of mind which 
may be called religious. It conspires with all exalted 
sentiments. 

Proceeding from absolute mind, wdiose nature is 
goodness as much as truth, the great works are 
always attuned to moral nature. If the earth and 
sea conspire with virtue more than vice, — so do the 
masterpieces of art. The galleries of ancient sculp- 
ture in Naples and Rome strike no deeper conviction 
into the mind than the contrast of the purity, the 
severity, expressed in these fine old heads, w^ith the 
frivolity and grossness of the mob that exhibits and 
the mob that jiazes at them. These are the coun- 
tenances of the first-born, — the face of man in the 
morning of the world. No mark is on these lofty 
features, of sloth, or luxury, or meanness, and they 
surprise you with a moral admonition, as they speak 
of nothing around you, but remind you of the fra- 
grant thoughts and the purest resolutions of your 
youth. 

Heroin is the explanation of the analogies which 
exist in all the arts. They are the reappearance of 



ART. 47 

one mind, working in many materials to many tem- 
porary ends. Raphael paints wisdom ; Handel sings 
it, Phidias carves it, Shakspeare writes it, Wren 
builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, 
Washino;ton arms it. Watt mechanizes it. Painting 
was called " silent poetry " ; and poetry, " speaking 
painting." The laws of each art are convertible 
into the laws of every other. 

Herein we have an explanation of the necessity 
that reigns in all the kingdom of Art. 

Arising out of eternal ReaSon, one and perfect, 
whatever is beautiful rests on the foundation of the 
necessary. Nothing is arbitrary, nothing is insu- 
lated in beauty. It depends forever on the neces- 
sary and the useful. The plumage of the bird, the 
mimic plumage of the insect, has a reason for its 
rich colors in the constitution of the animal. Fit- 
ness is so inseparable an accompaniment of beauty, 
that it has been taken for it. The most perfect 
form to answer an end is so far beautiful. We 
feel, in seeing a noble building, which rhymes well, 
as we do in hearing a perfect song, that it is spirit- 
ually organic ; that is, had a necessity, in nature, 
for being, was one of the possible forms in the 
Divine mind, and is now only discovered and ex- 
ecuted by the artist, not arbitrarily composed by 
him. 

And so every genuine work of art has as much 
reason for being as the earth and the sun. The 



48 ART. 

gayest charm of beauty lias a root in the constitu- 
tion of thiiws. The IHad of Homer, the sono-s of 
David, the odes of Pindar, the tragedies of JEschy- 
lus, the Doric temples, the Gothic cathedrals, the 
plays of Shakspeare, all and each were made not 
for sport, but in grave earnest, in tears and smiles 
of suffering and loving men. 

Viewed from this point, the history of Art be- 
comes intelhgible, and, moreover, one of the most 
agreeable studies. "We see how each work of art 
sprang irresistibly from necesslt}^, and, moreover, 
took its form from the broad hint of Nature. Beau- 
tiful In this wise is the obvious origin of all the 
known orders of architecture ; namely, that they 
were the idealizing of the primitive abodes of each 
people. There was no wilfulness in the savages in 
this perpetuating of their first rude abodes. The 
first form in which they built a house would be the 
first form of their public and religious edifice also. 
This form becomes immediately sacred in the eyes 
of their children, and, as more traditions cluster 
round it, is imitated with more splendor in each 
succeeding generation. 

In like manner, it has been remarked by Goethe 
that the granite breaks into parallelopipeds, which 
broken in two, one part would be an obelisk ; that 
in Upper Egypt the inhabitants would naturally 
mark a memorable spot by setting up so conspicu- 
ous a stone. Again, he suggested, we may see in 



ART. 49 

any stone "wall, on a fragment of rock, tlie project- 
ing veins of harder stone, which have resis;ted tlie 
action of frost and -water which has decomposed 
the rest. This appearance certainly gave the hint 
of tlie hieroglyphics inscribed on their obelisk. The 
amphitheatre of the old Romans, — any one may 
see its orio-in who looks at the crowd runnino; to- 
gether to see any fight, sickness, or odd appearance 
in the street. The first comers gather round in a 
circle ; those behind stand on tiptoe ; and farther 
back they climb on fences or window-sills, and so 
make a cup of which the object of attention occu- 
pies the hollow area. The architect put benches 
in this, and enclosed the cup with a wall, — and, be- 
hold a coliseum ! 

It would be easy to show of many fine things in 
the world, — in the customs of nations, the etiquette 
of courts, the constitution of governments, — the 
origin in quite simple local necessities. Heraldry, 
for example, and the ceremonies of a coronation, are 
a dignified repetition of the occurrences that might 
befall a dragoon and his footbo}^ The College of 
Cardinals were originally the parish priests of Rome. 
The leaning towers originated from the civil discords 
which induced every lord to build a tower. Then 
it became a point of family pride, — and for more 
pride the novelty of a leaning tower was built. 

This strict dependence of Art upon material and 
ideal Nature, this adamantine necessity which un- 



50 ART. 

derlies it, has made all its past, and may foreshow 
its future history. It never was in the power of 
any man, or any community, to call the arts into 
being. They come to serve his actual wants, never 
to please his fancy. These arts have their origin 
always in some enthusiasm, as love, patriotism, or 
relio;ion. Who carved marble ? The believino; man, 
who wished to S3'mbolize their gods to the waiting 
Greeks. 

The Gothic cathedrals were built when the 
builder and the priest and the people were over- 
powered by their faith. Love and fear laid every 
stone. The Madonnas of Raphael and Titian were 
made to be worshipped. Tragedy was instituted 
for the hke purpose, and the miracles of music : all 
sprang out of some genuine enthusiasm, and never 
out of dilettanteism and holidays. Now they lan- 
guish, because their purpose is merely exhibition. 
Who cares, who knows what works of art our gov- 
ernment have ordered to be made for the Capitol ? 
They are a mere flourish to please the eye of per- 
sons who have associations with books and galler- 
ies. But in Greece, the Demos of Athens divided 
into political factions upon the merits of Phidias. 

In this country, at this time, other interests than 
religion and patriotism are predominant, and the 
arts, the daughters of enthusiasm, do not flourish. 
The genuine offspring of our ruling passions we 
behold. Popular institutions, the school, the read- 



ART. 51 

mg-room, the telegraph, the post-office, the ex- 
change, the insurance-company, and the immense 
harvest of economical inventions^ are the fruit of 
the equality and the boundless liberty of lucrative 
callings. These are superficial wants ; and their 
fruits are these superficial institutions. Bat as far 
as they accelerate the end of political freedom and 
national education, they are preparing the soil of 
man for fairer flowers and fruits in another age. 
For beauty, truth, and goodness are not obsolete ; 
they spring eternal in the breast of man ; they are 
as indigenous in Massachusetts as in Tuscany or 
the Isles of Greece. And that Eternal Spirit, 
whose triple face they are, moulds from them for- 
ever, for his mortal child, images to remind him of 
the Infinite and Fau*. 



ELOQUENCE. 



ELOQUENCE. 

It is the doctrme of the popular music-masters, 
that whoever can speak can sing. So, probably, 
every man is eloquent once in his life. Our tem- 
peraments differ in capacity of heat, or, we boil at 
different degrees. One man is broufiht to the boil- 
ing-point by the excitement of conversation in the 
parlor. The waters, of course, are not very deep. 
He has a two-inch enthusiasm, a patty-pan ebullition. 
Another requires the additional caloric of a multi- 
tude, and a public debate ; a third needs an antag- 
onist, or a hot indignation ; a fourth needs a revolu- 
tion ; and a fifth, nothing less than the grandeur of 
absolute ideas, the splendors and shades of Heaven 
and Hell. 

But because every man is an orator, how long 
soever he may have been a mute, an assembly of 
men is so much more susceptible. The eloquence 
of one stimulates all the rest, some up to the speak 
ing-point, and all others to a degree that makes them 
good receivers and conductors, and they avenge 
themselves for their enforced silence by increased 
loquac'.t^; on their return to the fireside. 



5Q ELOQUENCE. 

The plight of these plilegmatic brains is better 
than tliat of those who prematurely boil, and 
who impatiently break silence before their time. 
Our county conventions often exhibit a small-pot- 
soon-hot style of eloquence. We are too much re- 
minded of a medical experiment where a series of 
patients are taking nitrous-oxide gas. Each patient, 
in turn, exhibits similar symptoms, — redness in the 
face, volubility, violent gesticulation, delirious atti- 
tudes, occasional stamping, an alarming loss of per- 
ception of the passage of time, a selfish enjoyment 
of his sensations, and loss of perception of the sufFer- 
ino;s of the audience. 

Plato says, that the punishment which the wise 
suffer, who refuse to take part in the government, is, 
to live under the government of worse men ; and 
the like reo-ret is surrojested to all the auditors, as 
the penalty of abstaining to speak, — that they shall 
hear worse orators than themselves. 

But this lust to speak marks the universal feeling 
of the energy of the engine, and the curiosity men 
feel to touch the springs. Of all the musical instru- 
ments on which men play, a popular assembly is 
that which has the largest compass and variety, and 
out of which, by genius and study, the most won- 
derful effects can be drawn. An audience iS not 
a simple addition of the individuals that compose it. 
Their sympathy gives them a certain social organism, 
which fills each member, in his own degree, and 



ELOQUENCE. 57 

most of all the orator, as a jar in a battery is charged 
with the whole electricity of the batteiy. No one 
can survey the face of an excited assembly, without 
being apprised of new opportunity for painting in 
fire human thought, and being agitated to agitate. 
How many orators sit mute there below ! They 
come to get justice done to that ear and intuition 
which no Chatham and no Demosthenes has begun 
to satisfy. 

The Welsh Triads say, " Many are the friends of 
the golden tongue." Who can wonder at the attract- 
iveness of Parhament, or of Congress, or the bar, 
for our ambitious young men, when the highest 
bribes of society are at the feet of the successful 
orator ? He has his audience at his devotion. All 
other fames must hush before his. He is the true 
potentate ; for they are not kings who sit on thrones, 
but they who know how to govern. The definitions 
of eloquence describe its attraction for young men. 
Antiphon the Rhamnusian, one of Plutarch's ten 
orators, advertised in Athens, " that he would cure 
distempers of the mind with w^ords." No man has 
a prosperity so high or firm but two or three w^ords 
can dishearten it. There is no calamity which right 
words will not becrjn to redress. Isocrates described 
his art as " the power of magnifying what was 
small and diminishing what was great, " — an acute 
but partial definition. Among the Spartans, the art 
assumed a Spartan sliape, namely, of the sharpest 



58 ELOQUENCE. 

weapon. Socrates says : *' If any one wishes tc 
converse with the meanest of tlie Lacedsemonians, 
he will at first find him despicable in conversation; 
but, when a proper oj)portunity offers, this same 
person, like a skilful jaculator, will hurl a sentence 
worthy of attention, short and contorted, so that he 
who converses with him will appear to be in no re- 
spect superior to a boy." Plato's definition of rhet- 
oric is, " the art of ruling the minds of men.'* The 
Koran says, '' A mountain may change its place, 
but a man will not change his disposition *'; yet the 
end of eloquence is, — is it not? — to alter in a 
pair of hours, perhaps in a half-hour's discourse, the 
convictions and habits of years. Young men, too, 
are eager to enjoy this sense of added power and 
enlarged sympathetic existence. The oi'ator sees 
himself the organ of a multitude, and concentrating 
their valors and powers : 

" But now the blood of twenty thousand men 
Blushed in my face." 

That which lie wishes, that Avhich eloquence ought 
to reach, is, not a particular skill in telling a story, 
or neatly summing up evidence, or arguing logically, 
or dexterously addressing the prejudice of the com- 
pany, — no, but a taking sovereign possession of the 
audience. Him we call an artist, who shall play on 
an assembly of men as a master on the keys of the 
piano, — who, seeing the people furious, shall soften 
and compose them, shall draw them, when he will. 



ELOQUENCE. 59 

to laughter and to tears. Bring him to his audience, 
and, be they who they may, — coarse or refined, 
pleased or displeased, sulky or savage, with their 
opinions in the keeping of a confessor, or with their 
opinions in their bank-safes, — he will have them 
pleased and humored as he chooses ; and they shall 
carr;^ and execute that which he bids them. 

This is that despotism which poets have celebrated 
in the *' Pied Piper of Hamelin," whose music drew 
like the power of gravitation, — drew soldiers and 
priests, traders and feasters, women and boys, rats 
and mice ; or that of the minstrel of Meudon, who 
made the pall-bearers dance around tlie bier. This 
is a power of many degrees, and requiring in the 
orator a great range of faculty and experience, re- 
quiring a large composite man, such as Nature 
rarely organizes ; so that, in our experience, we are 
forced to gather up the figure in fragments, here 
one talent, and there another. 

The audience is a constant metre of the orator. 
There are many audiences in every public assembly, 
each one of which rules in turn. If anything comic 
and coarse is spoken, you shall see the emergence 
of the boys and rowdies, so loud and vivacious that 
you might think the house was filled with them. If 
new topics are started, graver and higher, these 
roisters recede ; a more chaste and wise attention 
takes place. You would think the boys slept, and 
that the men have any degree of profoundness. If 



60 ELOQUENCE. 

the speaker utter a noble sentiment, the attention 
deepens, a new and highest audience now listens, 
and the audiences of the fun and of facts and of 
the understanding are all silenced and awed. There 
is also something excellent in every audience, — 
the capacity of virtue. They are ready to be beati- 
fied. They know so much more than the oratpr, — 
and are so just ! There is a tablet there for every 
hne he can inscribe, though he should mount to the 
highest levels. Humble persons are conscious of 
new illumination ; narrow brows expand with en- 
larged affections ; — delicate spirits, long unknown to 
themselves, masked and muffled in coarsest fortunes, 
who now hear their own native lano;uao;e for the first- 
time, and leap to hear it. But all these several audi- 
ences, each above each, which successively appear 
to greet the variety of style and topic, are really 
composed out of the same persons ; nay, sometimes 
the same individual will take active part in them 
all, in turn. 

This range of many powers in the consummate 
speaker, and of many audiences in one assembly, 
leads us to consider the successive stages of oratory. 

Perhaps it is the lowest of the qualities of an 
orator, but it is, on so many occasions, of chief im- 
portance, — a certain robust and radiant physical 
health; or, — shall I say? — great volumes of animal 
heat. When each auditor feels himself to make 
too large a part of the assembly, and shudders with 



ELOQUENCE. 61 

cold at the thinness of the morning audience, and 
with fear lest all will heavily fail through one bad 
speech, mere energy and mellowness are then in- 
estimable. Wisdom and learning would be harsh 
and unwelcome, compared with a substantial cordial 
man, made of milk, as we say, who is a house- 
warmer, with his obvious honesty and good mean- 
ing, and a hue-and-cry style of harangue, which 
inundates the assembly with a flood of animal 
spirits, and makes all safe and secure, so that any 
and every sort of good speaking becomes at once 
practicable. I do not rate this animal eloquence 
very highly; and yet, as we must be fed and warmed 
before we can do any work well, — even the best, — 
so is this semi-animal exuberance, like a good stove, 
of the first necessity in a cold house. 

Climate has much to do with it, — climate and 
race. Set a New^-Englander to describe any acci- 
dent which. happened in his presence. What hesi 
tation and reserve in his narrative ! He tells with 
difficulty some particulars, and gets as fast as h& 
can to the result, and, though he cannot describe, 
hopes to suggest the whole scene. Now listen to a 
poor Irishwoman recounting some experience of 
hers. Her speech flows like a river, — so uncon- 
sidered, so humorous, so pathetic, such justice done 
to all the parts! It is a true transubstantiation, — 
the fact converted into speech, all warm and colored 
and ahve, as it fell out. Our Southern people are 



62 ELOQUENCE. 

almost all speakers, and have every advantage over 
the New England people, whose climate is so cold 
that, 'tis said, we do not like to open our mouths 
very wide. But neither can the Southerner in the 
United States, nor the Irish, compare with the 
lively inhabitant of the south of Europe. The 
traveller in Sicily needs no gayer melodramatic 
exhibition than the table d'hote of his inn will af- 
ford him in the conversation of the joyous guests.. 
They mimic the voice and manner of the person 
they describe j they crow, squeal, hiss, cackle, bark, 
and scream like mad, and, were it only by the phys- 
ical strength exerted in telling the story, keep the 
table in unbounded excitemejit. But in every con- 
stitution some large deo;ree of animal vio;or is neces- 
sary as material foundation for the higher qualities 
of the art. 

But eloquence must be attractive, or it is none. 
The virtue of books is, to be readable, and of ora- 
tors, to be interesting ; and this is a gift of Nature ; 
as Demosthenes, the most laborious student in that 
kind, signified his sense of this necessity when he 
wrote, "• Good Fortune," as his motto on his shield. 
As we know, the power of discourse of certain in- 
dividuals amounts to fascination, though it may have 
no lasting effect. Some portion of this sugar must 
intermingle. The right eloquence needs no bell to 
call the people together, and no constable to keep 
them. It draws the children from their play, the 



ELOQUENCE. 63 

old from their arm-chairs, tlie invalid from his 
warm chamber : it holds the hearer fast ; steals 
away liis feet, that he shall not depart, — his mem- 
ory, that he shall not remember the most pressing, 
affairs, — his belief, that he shall not admit any 
opposing considerations. The pictures we have of 
it in semi-barbarous ages, when it has some advan- 
tages in the simpler habit of the people, show what 
it aims at. It is said that the Khans, or story-tel- 
lers, in Ispahan and other cities of the East, attain 
a controlling power over their audience, keeping 
them for many hours attentive to the most fanci- 
ful and extravagant adventures. Tiie whole world 
knows pretty well the style of these improvisators, 
and how fascinating they are, in our translations of 
the " Arabian Nights." Scheherezade tells these 
stories to save her life, and the delight of young 
Europe and young America in them j roves that 
she fairly earned it. And who does not remeniber 
in childhood some white or black or yellow Sche 
herezade, who, by that talent of telling endless feats 
of fairies and magicians, and kings and queens, 
was more dear and wonderful to a circle of chil- 
dren than any orator in England or America is 
now ? The more indolent and imaginative com- 
plexion of the Eastern nations makes them much 
more impressible by these appeals to the fancy. 

These legends are only exaggerations of real oc- 
currences, and every literature contains these high 



64 ELOQUENCE. 

compliments to the art of the orator and the bard, 
from the Hebrew and the Greek down to the Scot- 
tish Glenkindie, who 

" harpit a fish out o' saut-watcr, 
Or water out of a stone, 
Or milk out of a maiden's breast 
Who bairn had never none." 

Homer specially delighted in drawing the same 
figure. For what is the " Odyssey " but a history 
of the orator, in the largest style, carried through 
a series of adventures furnishing brilliant oppor- 
tunities to his talent? See with what care and 
pleasure the poet brings him on the stage. Helen 
is pointing out to Priam, from a tower, the different 
Grecian chiefs. " The old man asked : ' Tell me, 
dear child, who is that man, shorter by a head than 
Agamemnon, yet he looks broader in his shoulders 
and breast. His arms lie on the ground, but he, 
like a leader, walks about the bands of the men. 
He seems to me like a stately ram, who goes as 
a master of the flock.* Him answered Helen, 
daughter of Jove : ' This is the wise Ulysses, son 
of Laertes, who Avas reared in the state of craggy 
Ithaca, knowing all wiles and wise counsels.' To 
her the prudent Antenor replied again : ' O woman, 
you have spoken truly. For once the wise Ulysses 
came hitlier on an embassy, with Menelaus, beloved 
by Mars. I received them, and entertained them 
at my house. I became acquainted with the genius 



ELOQUENCE. 65 

and the prudent judgments of both. When they 
mixed with the assembled Trojans, and stood, the 
broad shoulders of Menelaus rose above the other; 
but, both sitting, Ulysses was more majestic. When, 
they conversed, and interweaved stories and opin- 
ions with all, Menelaus spoke succinctly, — few but 
very sweet words, since he was not talkative,, 
nor superfluous in speech, and was the younger. 
But when the wise Ulysses arose, and stood, and 
looked down, fixing his eyes on the ground, and< 
neither moved his sceptre backward nor forward, 
but held it still, like an awkward person, you would 
say it was some angry or foolish man ; but when he 
sent his great voice forth out of his breast, and his 
words fell like the winter snows, not then would 
any mortal contend with Ulysses ; and we, behold- 
ing, wondered not afterwards so much at his as- 
pect.' " * Thus he does not fail to arm Ulysses at 
first with this power of overcoming all opposition 
by the blandishments of speech. Plutarch tells us 
that Thucydides, when Archidamus, king of Sparta, 
asked him which was the best wrestler, — Pericles 
or he, — replied, " When I throw him, he says he 
was never down, and he persuades the very spec- 
tators to believe him." Philip of Macedon said of 
Demosthenes, on hearing the report of one of his 
orations, " Had I been there, he would have per- 
suaded me to take up arms against myself"; and 
* Iliad. III. 191. 



66 ELOQUENCE. 

Warren Hastings said of Burke's speech on his 
impeachment, " As I listened to the orator, I felt 
for more than half an hour as if I were the most 
culpable being on earth." 

In these examples, higher qualities have already 
entered ; but the power of detaining the ear by 
pleasing speech, and addressing the fancy and im- 
agination, often exists without higher merits. Thus 
separated, as this fascination of discourse aims only 
at amusement, though it be decisive in its momentary 
effect, it is yet a juggle, and of no lasting power. It 
is heard like a band of music passing through the 
streets, which converts all the passengers into poets, 
but is foro^otten as soon as it has turned the next 
corner; and unless this oiled tongue could, in Orien- 
tal phrase, lick the sun and moon away, it must 
take its place with opium and brandy. I know no 
remedy against it but cotton-wool, or the wax which 
Ulysses stuffed into the ears of his sailors to pass the 
Sirens safely. 

There are all degrees of power, and the least are 
interesting, but they must not be confounded. There 
is the glib tongue and cool self-possession of the 
salesman in a large shop, which, as is well known, 
overpower the prudence and resolution of house- 
keepers of both sexes. There is a petty lawyer's 
fluency, which is sufficiently impressive to him who 
is devoid of that talent, though it be, in so many 
cases, nothing more than a facility of expressing with 



ELOQUENCE. 67 

accuracy and speed what everybody thinks and says 
more slowly, without new information, or precision 
of thought, — but the same thing, neither less nor 
more. It requires no special insight to edit one of 
our country newspapers. Yet whoever can say off 
currently, sentence by sentence, matter neither bet- 
ter nor worse than what is there printed, will be 
very impressive to our easily pleased population. 
These talkers are of that class who prosper, like the 
celebrated schoolmaster, by being only one lesson 
ahead of the pupil. Add a little sarcasm, and 
prompt allusion to passing occurrences, and you 
have the mischievous member of Congress. A spice 
of malice, a ruffian touch in his rhetoric, will do him 
no harm with his audience. These accomplishments 
are of the same kind, and' only a degree higher than 
the coaxing of the auctioneer, or the vituperative 
style well described in the street- word "jawing." 
These kinds of public and private speaking have 
their use and convenience to the practitioners ; but 
w^e may say of such collectively, that the habit of 
oratory is apt to disqualify them for eloquence. 

One of our statesmen said, " The curse of this 
country is eloquent men." And one cannot wonder 
at the uneasiness sometimes manifested by trained 
statesmen, with large experience of public aifairs, 
when they observe the disproportionate advantage 
suddenly given to oratory over the most solid and 
accumulated public service. In a Senate or other 



68 ELOQUENCE. 

business committee, the solid result depends on a 
few men with working-talent. They know how to 
deal with the facts before them, to put things into 
a practical shape, and they value men only as they 
can forward the work. But a new man comes 
there, who has no capacity for helping them at all, 
is insignificant, and nobody in the committee, but 
has a talent for speaking. In the debate with open 
doors, this precious person makes a speech, which 
is printed, and read all over the Union, and he at 
once becomes famous, and takes the lead in the 
public mind over all these executive men, who, of 
course, are full of indignation to find one who has 
no tact or skill, and knows he has none, put over 
them by means of this talking-power which they 
despise. 

Leaving behind us these pretensions, better or 
worse, to come a little nearer to the verity, — elo- 
quence is attractive as an example of the magic of 
personal ascendency, — a total and resultant power, 
rare, because it requires a rich coincidence of powers, 
intellect, will, sympathy, organs, and, over all, good 
fortune in the cause. We have a half-belief that 
the person is possible who can counterpoise all other 
persons. We believe that there may be a man who 
is a match for events, — one who never found his 
match, — against whom other men being dashed are 
broken, — one of inexhaustible personal resources, 
who can give you any odds and beat you. What 



ELOQUENCE. 69 

we really wish for is a mind equal to any exigency. 
You are safe in your raral district, or in the city, in 
broad daylight, amidst the police, and under the eyes 
of a hundred thousand people. But how is it on 
the Atlantic, in a storm, — do you understand how 
to infuse your reason into men disabled by terror, 
and to bring yourself off safe then ? — how among 
thieves, or among an infuriated populace, or among 
cannibals ? Face to face with a highwayman who 
has every temptation and opportunity for violence 
and plunder, can you bring yourself off safe by your 
wit, exercised through speech ? — a problem easy 
enough to Ca3sar or Napoleon. Whenever a man 
of that stamp arrives, the highwayman has found a 
master. What a difference between men in power 
of face ! A man succeeds because he has more 
power of eye than another, and so coaxes or con- 
founds him. The newspapers, every week, report 
the adventures of some impudent swindler, who, by 
steadiness of carriage, duped those who should have 
known better. Yet any swindlers we have known 
are novices and bunglers, as is attested by their ill 
name. A greater power of face would accomplish 
anything, and, with the rest of their takings, take 
away the bad name. A greater power of carrying 
the thing loftily, and with perfect assurance, v/ould 
confound merchant, banker, judge, men of influence 
and power, — poet and president, — and might head 
any party, unseat any sovereign, and abrogate any 



70 ELOQUENCE. 

constilutioii in Europe and America. It was said 
that a man has at one step attained vast power, who 
has renounced his moral sentiment, and settled it 
with himself that he will no longer stick at anything. 
It was said of Sir William Pepperel, one of the 
worthies of New England, that, " put him where 
you might, he commanded, and saw what he willed 
come to pass." Julius Coesar said to Metellus, when 
that tribune interfered to hinder him from entering 
the Roman treasury, " Young man, it is easier for 
me to put you to death than to say that I will " ; 
and the youth yielded. In earlier days, he was 
taken by pirates. What then ? He threw himself 
into their ship, established the most extraordinary 
intimacies, told them stories, declaimed to them ; if 
they did not applaud his speeches, he threatened 
them with hanging, — which he performed after- 
wards, — and, in a short time, was master of all on 
board. A man this is who cannot be disconcerted, 
and so can never play his last card, but has a reserve 
of power when he has hit his mark. With a serene 
face, he subverts a kingdom. What is told of him 
is miraculous ; it affects men so. The confidence 
of men in him Is lavish, and he changes the face of 
the world, and histories, poems, and new philoso- 
phies arise to account for him. A supreme com- 
mander over all his passions and affections ; but the 
secret of his ruling is higher than that. It is the 
power of Nature running without impediment from 



ELOQUENCE. 71 

the briiin arid will into the hands. Men and wo- 
men are his game. Where they are, he cannot be 
without resource. " Whoso can speak well," said 
Luther, " is a man." It was men of this stamp 
that the Grecian States used to ask of Sparta for 
generals. They did not send to Lacedsemon for 
troops, hut they said, "Send us a commander"; 
and Pausanias, or Gylippus, or Brasidas, or Agis, 
was despatched by the Ephors. 

It is easy to illustrate this overpowering person- 
ality by these examples of soldiers and kings ; but 
there are men of the most peaceful way of life, and 
peaceful principle, who are felt, wherever they go, 
as sensibly as a July sun or a December frost, — 
men who, if they speak, are heard, though they 
speak in a whisper, — who, when they act, act ef- 
fectually, and what they do is imitated ; and these 
examples may be found on very humble platforms, 
as well as on high ones. 

In old countries, a high money-value is set on 
the services of men who have achieved a personal 
distinction. He who has points to carry must hire, 
not a skilful attorney, but a commanding person. A 
barrister in England is reputed to have made thirty 
or forty thousand pounds per annum in representing 
the claims of railroad companies before committees 
of the House of Commons. His clients pay not 
so much for legal as for manly accomplishments, — 
for courage, conduct, and a commanding social 



72 ELOQUENCE. 

position, which enable him to make their claims 
heard and respected. 

I know very well, that, among our cool and cal- 
culating people, where every man mounts guard 
over himself, where heats and panics and abandon- 
ments are quite out of the system, there is a good 
deal of scepticism as to extraordinary influence. 
To talk of an overpowering mind rouses the same 
jealousy and defiance which one may observe 
round a table where anybody is recounting the 
marvellous anecdotes of mesmerism. Each audi- 
tor puts a final stroke to the discourse by exclaim- 
ing, "Can he mesmerize mef^ So each man in- 
quires if any orator can change his convictions. 

But does any one suppose himself to be quite 
impregnable? Does he think that not possibly a 
man may come to him who shall persuade him out 
of his most settled determination ? — for example, 
good sedate citizen as he is, to make a fanatic of 
him, — or, if he is penurious, to squander money for 
some purpose he now least thinks of, — or, if he is 
a prudent, industrious person, to forsake his work, 
and give days and weeks to a new interest ? No, 
he defies any one, every one. Ah ! he is thinking 
of resistance, and of a different turn from his own. 
But what if one should come of the same turn of 
mind as his own, and who sees much farther on his 
own way than he ? A man v/ho has tastes like 
mine, but in greater power, will rule me any day, 
and make me love my ruler. 



ELOQUENCE. 73 

Tims it is not powers of speech tnat we primarily 
consider under this word eloquence^ but the power 
that, being present, gives them their perfection, 
and, being absent, leaves them a merely superficial 
value. Eloquence is the appropriate organ of the 
highest personal energy. Personal ascendency may 
exist with or without adequate talent for its expres- 
sion. It is as surely felt as a mountain or a planet ; 
but when it is weapon ed with a power of speech, it 
seems first to become truly human, works actively 
in all directions, and supplies the imagination with 
fine materials. 

This circumstance enters into every considera- 
tion of the power of orators, and is the key to all 
their effects. In the assembly, you shall find the 
orator and the audience in perpetual balance ; and 
the predominance of either is indicated by the 
choice of topic. If the talents for speaking exist, 
but not the strong personality, then there are good 
speakers who perfectly receive and express the will 
of the audience, and the commonest populace is 
flattered by hearing its low mind returned to it 
with every ornament which happy talent can add. 
But if there be personality in the orator, the face 
of thlno-s chancres. The audience is thrown into 
the attitude of pupil, follows like a child its pre- 
ceptor, and hears what he has to say. It is as 
if, amidst the king's council at Madrid, Xlmenes 
urged tliat an advantage might be gained of France, 



Y4 ELOQUENCE. 

and Mendoza that Flanders might be kept down, 
and Columbus, being introduced, was interrogated 
whether his geographical knowledge could aid the 
cabinet, and he can say nothing to one party or to 
the otlier, but he can show how all Europe can be 
diminished and reduced under the king, by a^mex- 
ing to Spain a continent as large as six or jeven 
Europes. 

This balance between the orator and the audi- 
ence is expressed in what is called the pertinence 
of the speaker. There is always a rivalry between 
the orator and the occasion, between the demands 
of the hour and the prepossession of the individual. 
The emergency which has convened the meeting is 
usually of more importance than anything the de- 
baters have in their minds, and therefore becomes 
imperative to them. But if one of them have any- 
thing of commanding necessity in his heart, how 
speedily he will find vent for it, and with the ap- 
plause of the assembly ! This balance is observed 
in the privatest intercourse. Poor Tom never 
knew the time when the present occurrence was 
so trivial that he could tell what was passing in 
his mind without being checked for unseasonable 
speech ; but let Bacon speak, and wise men would 
rather listen, though the revolution of kingdoms was 
on foot. I have heard it reported of an eloquent 
preacher, whose voice is not yet forgotten in this 
city, that, on occasions of death or tragic disaster, 



ELOQUENCE 75 

which overspread the congregation with gloom, he 
ascended the pulpit with more than his usual alac- 
rity, and, turning to his favorite lessons of devout and 
jubilant thankfulness, — " Let us praise the Lord," 
— carried audience, mourners, and mourning along 
with him, and swept away all the impertinence 
of private sorrow v»dth his hosannas and songs of 
praise. Pepys says of Lord Clarendon (with whom 
'' he is mad in love "), on his return from a con- 
ference, " I did never observe how much easier a 
man do speak when he knows all the company to 
be below him, than in him; for, though he spoke 
indeed excellent well, yet his manner and freedom 
of doing it, as if he played with it, and was in- 
formmg only all the rest of the company, was 
mighty prett3\" * 

This rivaJry between the orator and the occasion 
is inevitable, and the occasion always yields to the 
eminence of the speaker; for a great man is the 
greatest of occasions. Of course, the interest of 
the audience and of the orator conspire. It is well 
with them only when his influence is complete ; 
then only they are well pleased. Especially, he 
consults his power by making instead of taking his 
theme. If he should attempt to instruct the peo- 
ple in that which they already know, he would fail ; 
but, by making them wise in that which he knows, 
he has the advantage of the assembly every mo- 

* Diary, I. 169. 



76 ELOQUENCE. 

ment. Napoleon's tactics of marching on the angle 
of an army, and alwa3^s presenting a superiority of 
numbers, is the orator's secret also. 

The several talents which the orator employs, the 
splendid weapons which went to the equipment of 
Demosthenes, of ^schines, of Demades the natural 
orator, of Fox, of Pitt, of Patrick Henry, of Adams, 
of Mirabeau, deserve a special enumeration. We 
must not quite omit to name the principal pieces. 

The orator, as we have seen, must be a substan- 
tial personalit3^ Then, first, he must have power 
of statement, — must have the fact, and know how 
to tell it. In any knot of men conversing on any 
subject, the person who knows most about it will 
have the ear of the company, if he wishes it, and 
lead the conversation, — no matter what genius or 
distinction other men there present may have ; and 
in any public assembly, him wdio has the facts, and 
can and will state them, people will listen to, though 
he is otherwise ignorant, though he is hoarse and 
uncjraceful, thouMi he stutters and screams. 

In a court of justice, the audience are impartial ; 
they really wish to sift the statements and know 
what the truth is. And in the examination of wit- 
nesses there usually leap out, quite unexpectedly, 
three or four stubborn words or phrases which are 
the pith and fate of the business, wdiich sink into 
the ear of all parties, and stick there, and determine 
the cause. All the rest is repetition and qualifying ; 



ELOQUENCE. 77 

and the court and the county have really come 
together to arrive at these three or four memorable 
expressions, which betrayed the mind and meaning 
of somebody. 

In every company, the man with the fact is like 
the guide you hire to lead your party up a moun- 
tain, or through a difficult country. He may not 
compare with any of the party in mind, or breeding, 
or courage, or possessions, but he is much more im 
portant to the present need than any of them. That 
is what we go to the court-house for, — the state- 
ment of the fact, and the elimination of a general 
fact, the real relation of all the parties ; and it is the 
certainty with which, indifferently in any affair that 
is well handled, the truth stares us in the face, 
through all the disguises that are put upon it, — a 
piece of the well-known human life, — that makes 
the interest of a court-room to the intelligent spec- 
tator. 

I remember, long ago, being attracted by the dis- 
tinction of the counsel, and the local importance of 
the cause, into the court-room. The prisoner's 
counsel were the strongest and cunningest lawyers 
in the Commonwealth. They drove the attorney 
for the State from corner to corner, taking his rea- 
sons from under him, and reducing him to silence, 
but not to submission. When hard pressed, he re- 
venged himself, in his turn, on the judge, by requir- 
ing the court to define what salvage was. The 



78 ELOQUENCE. 

court, thus pushed, tried words, and said everything 
it could think of to fill the time, supposing cases, 
and describing duties of insurers, captains, pilots, 
and miscellaneous sea-officers that are or might be, 

— like a schoolmaster puzzled by a hard sum, who 
reads the context with emphasis. But all this flood 
not serving the cuttle-fish to get away in, the hor- 
rible shark of the district-attorney being still there, 
grimly awaiting with his " The court must define," 

— the poor court pleaded its inferiority. The su- 
perior court must establish the law for this, and it 
read away piteously the decisions of the Supreme 
Court, but read to those who had no pity. The 
judge was forced at last to rule something, and the 
lawyers saved their rogue under the fog of a defi- 
nition. The parts were so well cast and discriminat- 
ed, that it was an interesting game to watch. The 
government was well enough represented. It was 
stupid, but it had a strong will and possession, and 
stood on that to the last. The judge had a task 
beyond his preparation, yet his position remained 
real: he was there to represent a great reaUty, — 
the justice of states, which we could well enough 
see beetling over bis head, and which his trifling 
talk nowise affected, and did not impede, since he 
was entirely well-meaning. 

The statement of the fact, however, sinks before 
the statement of the law, which requires immeasur- 
ably higher powers, and is a rarest gift, being in all 



ELOQUENCE. 79 

great masters one and the same thing, — in lawyers, 
nothing technical, but always some piece of common 
sense, alike interesting to laymen as to clerks. Lord 
Mansfield's merit is the merit of common sense. It 
is the same quality we admire in Aristotle, Mon- 
taigne, Cervantes, or in Samuel Johnson, or Frank- 
lin. Its application to law seems quite accidental. 
Each of Mansfield's famous decisions contains a level 
sentence or two, which hit the mark. His sentences 
are not always finished to the eye, but are finished 
to the mind. The sentences are involved, but a 
solid proposition is set forth, a true distinction is 
drawn. They come from and they go to the sound 
human understanding ; and I read without surprise 
that the black-letter lawyers of the day sneered at 
his " equitable decisions," as if they were not also 
learned. This, indeed, is what speech is for, — to 
make the statement ; and all that is called eloquence 
seems to me of little use, for the most part, to those 
who have ip, but inestimable to such as have some- 
thing to say. 

Next to the knowledge of the fact and its law is 
method, which constitutes the genius and efiiciency 
of all remarkable men. A crowd of men go up to 
Faneuil Hall ; they are all pretty well acquainted 
with the object of the meeting ; they have all read 
the facts in the same newspapers, f he orator pos- 
sesses no information which his hearers have not ', 
yet he teaches them to see the thing with his eyes. 



80 ELOQUENCE. 

By the new placing, the circumstances acquire new 
solidity and worth. Every fact gains consequence 
by his naming it, and trifles become important. His 
expressions fix themselves in men's memories, and 
fly from mouth to mouth. His mind has some new 
principle of order. Where he looks, all things fly 
into their places. What will he say next ? Let 
this man speak, and this man only. By applying 
the habits of a higher style of thought to the com- 
mon affiiirs of this world, he introduces beauty and 
magnificence wherever he goes. Such a power 
was Burke's, and of this genius we have had some 
brilliant examples in our own political and legal men. 
Imagery. The orator must be, to a certain ex- 
tent, a poet. We are such imaginative creatures, 
that nothing so works on the human mind, barba- 
rous or civil, as a trope. Condense some daily ex- 
perience into a glowing symbol, and an audience is 
electrified. They feel as if they already possessed 
some new right and power over a fact, which they 
can detach, and so completely master in thought. 
It is a wonderful aid to the memory, which carries 
away the image, and never loses it. A popular as- 
sembly, like the House of Commons, or the French 
Chamber, or the American Congress, is commanded 
by these two powers, — first by a fact, then by skill 
of statement. Put the aro-ument into a concrete 
shape, into an image, — some hard phrase, round 
and solid as a ball, which they can see and handle 



ELOQUENCE. 81 

and carry home with them, — and the cause is half 
won. 

Statement, method, imagery, selection, tenacity 
of memory, power of dealing with facts, of illuminat- 
ing them, of sinking them hy ridicule or by diversion 
of the mind, rapid generalization, humor, pathos, are 
keys which the orator holds ; and yet these fine 
gifts are not eloquence, and do often hinder a man's 
attainment of it. And if we come to the heart of 
the mystery, perhaps we should say that the truly 
eloquent man is a sane man with power to commu- 
nicate his sanity. If you arm the man with the ex- 
traordinary weapons of this art, give him a grasp of 
facts, learning, quick fancy, sarcasm, splendid allu- 
sion, interminable illustration, — all these talents, so 
potent and charming, have an equal power to in- 
snare and mislead the audience and the orator. 
His talents are too much for him, his horses run 
away with him ; and people always perceive wheth- 
er you drive, or whether the horses take the bits in 
their teeth and run. But these talents are ^ quite 
something else when they are subordinated and 
serve him ; and we go to Washington, or to West- 
minster Hall, or might well go round the world, to 
see a man who drives, and is not run away with, — 
a man who, in prosecuting great designs, has an ab- 
solute command of the means of representing his 
ideas, and uses them only to express these ; placing 
facts, placing men ; amid the inconceivable levity of 



82 ELOQUENCE. 

human beings, never for an instant warped from 
his erectness. There is for every man a statement 
possible of that truth which he is most unwilhng to 
receive, — a statement possible, so broad and so 
pungent that he cannot get away from it, but must 
either bend to it or die of it. Else there would be 
no such word as eloquence, which means this. The 
listener cannot hide from himself that something has 
been shown him and the whole world, which he did 
not wish to see ; and, as he cannot dispose of it, it 
disposes of him. The history of public men and 
affairs in America will readily furnish tragic ex- 
amples of this fatal force. 

For the triumphs of the art somewhat more must 
still be required, namely, a reinforcing of man from 
events, so as to give the double force of reason and 
destiny. In transcendent eloquence, there was 
ever some crisis in affairs, such as could deeply en- 
gage the man to the cause he pleads, and draw all 
this wide power to a point. For the explosions and 
eruptions, there must be accumulations of heat 
somewhere, beds of ignited anthracite at the centre. 
And in cases where profound conviction has been 
wrought, the eloquent man is he who is no beauti- 
ful speaker, but who is inwardly drunk with a cer- 
tain belief. It agitates and tears him, and perhaps 
almost bereaves him of the power of articulation. 
Then it rushes from him as in short, abrupt screams, 
in torrents of meaning. The possession the subject 



ELOQUENCE. 83 

has of his mind is so entire, that it insures an 
order of expression which is the order of Nature it- 
self, and so the order of greatest force, and inimit- 
able by any art. And the main distinction between 
him and other well-graced actors is the conviction, 
communicated by every word, that his mind is con- 
templating a whole, and inflamed by the contem- 
plation of the whole, and that the words and sen- 
tences uttered by him, however admirable, fall from 
him as unregarded parts of that terrible whole 
which he. sees, and w^hich he means that you shall 
see. Add to this concentration a certain regnant 
calmness, which, in all the tumult, never utters a 
premature syllable, but keeps the secret of its 
means and method ; and the orator stands before 
the people as a demoniacal power to whose miracles 
they have no key. This terrible earnestness makes 
good the ancient superstition of the hunter, that 
the bullet will hit its mark, which is first dipped in 
the marksman's blood. 

Eloquence must be grounded on the plainest nar- 
rative. Afterwards, it may warm itself until it ex- 
Jiales symbols of every kind and color, speaks only 
through the most poetic forms ; but, first and last, 
it must still be at bottom a biblical statement of 
fact. The orator is thereby an orator, that he 
keeps his feet ever on a fact. Thus only is he in- 
vincible. No gifts, no graces, no power of wit or 
learning or illustration, will make any amends for 



84 ELOQUENCE. 

want of this. All audiences are just to tills point. 
Fame of voice or of rhetoric will carry people a 
few times to hear a speaker ; but they soon begin to 
ask, " What is he driving at ? " and if this man 
does not stand for anything, he will be deserted. 
A good upholder of anytliing which they believe, a 
fact-speaker of any kind, they will long follow ; but 
a pause in the speaker's own character is very 
properly a loss of attraction. The preacher enumer- 
ates his classes of men, and I do not find ray place 
therein ; I suspect, then, that no man does. Every- 
thing is my cousin; and whilst he speaks things, I 
feel that he is touching some of my relations, and I 
am uneasy ; but whilst he deals in words, we are 
released from attention. If you would lift me, 
you must be on higher ground. If you would lib- 
erate me, you must be free. If you would correct 
my false view of facts, — hold up to me the same 
facts in the true order of thought, and I cannot go 
back from the new conviction. 

The power of Chatham, of Pericles, of Luther, 
rested on this strength of character, which, because 
it did not and could not fear anybody, made noth- 
ing of their antagonists, and became sometimes ex- 
quisitely provoking and sometimes terrific to these. 

We are slenderly furnished with anecdotes of 
these men, nor can we help ourselves by those 
heavy books in which their discourses are reported. 
Some of them were writers, like Burke ; but most 



ELOQUENCE. 85 

of them were not, and no record at all adequate 
to their fame remains. Besides, what is best is 
lost, — the fiery life of the moment. But the con- 
ditions for eloquence always exist. It is always dy- 
ing out of famous places, and appearing in corners. 
Wherever the polarities meet, wherever the fresh 
moral sentiment, the instinct of freedom and duty, 
come in direct opposition to fossil conservatism and 
the thirst of gain, the spark will pass. The resist- 
ance to slavery in this country has been a fruitful 
nursery of orators. The natural connection by 
which it drew to itself a train of moral reforms, and 
the slight yet sufficient party organization it offered, 
reinforced the city with new blood from the woods 
and mountains. Wild men, John Baptists, Hermit 
Peters, John Knoxes, utter the savage sentiment of 
Nature in the heart of commercial capitals. They 
send us every year some piece of aboriginal strength, 
some touffh oak-stick of a man Avho is not to be si- 
lenced or insulted or intimidated by a mob, because 
he is m-ore mob than they, — one who mobs the 
mob, — some sturdy countryman, on whom neither 
money, nor politeness, nor hard words, nor eggs, 
nor blows, nor brickbats, make any impression. 
lie is fit to meet the bar-room wits and bullies ; he 
is a wit and a bully himself, and something more : 
he is a graduate of the plough, and the stub-hoe, 
and the bushwhacker; knows all the secrets of 
swamp and snow-bank, and has nothing to learn of 



86 ELOQUENCE. 

labor or poverty or the rough of farming. His hard 
head went through, in childhood, the drill of Cal- 
vinism, with text and mortification, so that he 
stands in the New England assembly a purer bit of 
New England than any, and flings his sarcasms 
right and left. He has not only the documents in 
his pocket to answer all cavils, and to prove all his 
positions, but he has the eternal reason in his head. 
This man scornfully renounces your civil organiza- 
tions, — county, or city, or governor, or army, — 
is his own navy and artillery, judge and jury, legis- 
lature and executive. He has learned his lessons 
in a bitter school. Yet, if the pupil be of a texture 
to bear it, the best university that can be recom- 
mended to a man of ideas is the gauntlet of the 
mobs. 

He who will train himself to mastery in this sci- 
ence of persuasion must lay the emphasis of educa- 
tion, not on popular arts, but on character and in- 
sight. Let him see that his speech is not differenced 
from action ; that, when he has spoken, he has not 
done nothing, nor done wrong, but has cleared his 
own skirts, has engaged himself to wholesome exer- 
tion. Let him look on opposition as opportunity. 
He cannot be defeated or put down. There is a 
principle of resurrection in him, an immortality of 
purpose. Men are averse and hostile, to give value 
to their suffrages. It is not the people that are in 
fault for not being convinced, but he that caiinot 



ELOQUENCE. 

convince them. He should mould them, armed 
as he is with the reason and love which are also the 
core of their nature. He is not to neutralize their 
opposition, but he is to convert them into fiery apos- 
tles and publishers of the same wisdom. 

The highest platform of eloquence is the moral 
sentiment. It is what is called affirmative truth, 
and has the property of invigorating the hearer ; 
and it conveys a hint of our eternity, when he 
feels himself addressed on grounds which will re- 
main when everything else is taken, and which have 
no trace of time or place or party. Everything 
hostile is stricken down in the presence of the sen- 
timents ; their majesty is felt by the most obdurate. 
It is observable that, as soon as one acts for large 
masses, the moral element will and must be allowed 
for, will and must work ; and the men least accus- 
tomed to appeal to these sentiments invariably re- 
call them when they address nations. Napoleon, 
even, must accept and use it as he can. 

It is only to these simple strokes that the highest 
power belongs, — when a weak human hand touches, 
point by point, the eternal beams and rafters on 
which the whole structure of Nature and society is 
laid. In this tossing sea of delusion, we feel with our 
feet the adamant ; in this dominion of chance, we 
find a principle of permanence. For I do not ac- 
cept that definition of Isocrates, that the office of 
his art Is, to make the great small and the small 



88 ELOQUENCE. 

great; but I esteem this to be its perfection, — 
when, the orator sees through all masks to the eter- 
nal s^ale of truth, in such sort that he can hold up 
before the eyes of men the fact of to-day steadily 
to that standard, thereby making the great great, 
and the small small, which is the true way to aston- 
ish and to reform mankind. 

All the chief orators of the world have been grave 
men. relying on this reality. One thought the phi- 
losophers of Demosthenes's own time found run- 
ning through all his orations, — this namely, that 
" virtue secures its own success." " To stand on 
one's own feet " Heeren finds the key-note to the 
discourses of Demosthenes, as of Chatham. 

Eloquence, like every other art, rests on laws the 
most exact and determinate. It is the best speech 
of the best soul. It may well stand as the exponent 
of all that is grand and immortal in the mind. If it 
do not so become an instrument, but aspires to be 
somewhat of itself, and to glitter for show, it is false 
and weak. In its right exercise, it is an elastic, 
unexhausted power, — who has sounded, who has 
estimated it ? — expanding with the expansion of 
our interests and affections. Its great masters, 
whilst they valued every help to its attainment, 
and thought no pains too great which contributed 
in any manner to further it ; — resembling the Ara- 
bian warrior of fame, who wore seventeen weapons 
in his belt, and in personal combat used them all 



ELOQUENCE. 89 

occasionally ; — yet subordinated all means ; never 
permitted any talent — neither voice, rhythm, poetic 
power, anecdote, sarcasm — to appear for show ; but 
were grave men, who preferred their integrity to 
their talent, and esteemed that object for which they 
toiled, whether the prosperity of their country, or 
the laws, or a reformation, or liberty of speech or 
of the press, or letters, or morals, as above the 
whole worldj and themselves also. 



DOMESTIC LIFE. 



DOMESTIC LIFE. 

The perfection of the providence for childhood is 
easily acknowledged. The care which covers the 
seed of the tree under tough husks and stony cases 
provides for- the human plant the mother's breast 
and the father's house. The size of the nestler is 
comic, and its tiny beseeching weakness is compen- 
sated perfectly by the happy patronizing look of the 
mother, who is a sort of high reposing Providence 
toward it. Welcome to the parents the puny strug- 
gler, strong in his weakness, his little arms more ir- 
resistible than the soldier's, his lips touched with 
persuasion which Chatham and Pericles in man- 
hood had not. His unaffected lamentations when 
he lifts up his voice on high, or, more beautiful, the 
sobbing child, — the face all liquid grief, as he tries 
to swallow his vexation, — soften all hearts to pity, 
and to mirthful and clamorous compassion. The 
small despot asks so little that all reason and all na- 
ture are on his side. His ignorance is more charm- 
ing than all knowledge, and his little sins more be- 
witching than any virtue. His flesh is angels' flesh, 
all alive. '^ Infancy," said Coleridge, '' presents 



94 DOMESTIC LIFE. 

body and spirit in unity : the body is all animated." 
All day, between his three or four sleeps, he coos 
like a pigeon-house, sputters, and spurs, and puts 
on his faces of importance; and when he fasts, the 
little Pharisee fails not to sound his trumpet before 
him. By lamplight he delights in shadows on the 
wall; by daylight, in yellow and scarlet. Carry 
him out of doors, — he is overpowered by the light 
and by the extent of natural objects, and is silent. 
Then presently begins his use of his fingers, and he 
studies power, the lesson of his race. First it ap- 
pears in no great harm, in architectural tastes. Out 
of blocks, thread-spools, cards, and checkers, he will 
build his pyramid with the gravity of Palladio. 
With an acoustic apparatus of whistle and rattle he 
explores the laws of sound. But chiefly, like his 
senior countrymen, the young American studies 
new and speedier modes of transportation. Mis- 
trusting the cunning of his small legs, he wishes to 
ride on the necks and shoulders of all flesh. The 
small enchanter nothing can withstand, — no sen- 
iority of age, no gravity of character ; uncles, aunts, 
^randsires, grandams, fall an easy prey: he con- 
forms to nobody, all conform to him ; all caper and 
make mouths, and babble, and chirrup to him. On 
the strongest shoulders he rides, and pulls the hair 
of laurelled heads. 

" The childhood," said Milton, ''shows the man, 
as morning shows the day." The child realizes to 



DOMESTIC LIFE. 95 

every man his own earliest remembrance, and so 
supplies a defect in our education, or enables us to 
live over the unconscious history with a sympathy 
so tender as to be almost personal experience. 

Fast — almost too fast for the wistful curiosity of 
the parents, studious of the witchcraft of curls and 
dimples and broken words — the little talker grows 
to a boy. He walks daily among w^onders: fire, 
light, darkness, the moon, the stars, the furniture of 
the house, the red tin horse, the domestics, who like 
rude foster-mothers befriend and feed him, the faces 
that claim his kisses, are all in turn absorbing ; yet 
warm, cheerful, and with good appetite the little 
sovereign subdues them without knowing it; the 
new knowledge is taken up Jnto the life of to-day 
and becomes the means of more. The blowing 
rose is a new event ; the garden full of flowers is 
Eden over again to the small Adam ; the rain, the 
ice, the frost, make epochs in his life. What a 
holiday is the first snow in which Twoshoes can be 
tiusted abroad ! 

^Yhat art can paint or gild any object in after- 
life with the glow which Nature gives to the first 
baubles of childhood ! St. Peter's can not have the 
magical power over us that the red and gold covers 
of our first picture-book possessed. How the im- 
agination cleaves to the warm glories of that tinsel 
even now ! What entertainments make every day 
bright and short for the fine freshman ! The street 



96 DOMESTIC LIFE. 

is old as Nature ; the persons all have their sacreJ- 
ness. His imao-inative life dresses all thino-s in their 
best. His fears adorn the dark parts with poetry. 
He has heard of wild horses and of bad boys, and 
with a pleasing terror he watches at his gate for the 
passing of those varieties of each species. The first 
ride into the country, the first bath in running water, 
the first time the skates are put on, the first game 
out of doors in moonlight, the books of the nursery, 
are new chapters of joy. The " Arabian Nights' 
Entertainments," the " Seven Champions of Chris- 
tendom," " Robinson Crusoe," and the '^ Pilgrim's 
Progress," — what mines of thought and emotion, 
what a wardrobe to dress the whole world withal, 
are in this encyclopaedia of young thinking! And 
60 by beautiful traits, which, without art, yet seem 
the masterpiece of wisdom, provoking the love that 
watches and educates him, the little pilgrim prose- 
cutes the journey through nature which he has 
thus gayly begun. He grows up the ornament and 
joy of the house, which rings to his glee, to rosy 
boyhood. 

The household is the home of the man, as well 
as of the child. The events that occur therein are 
more near and affecting to us than those which 
are sou£:ht in senates and academies. Domestic 
events are certainly our affair. What are called 
public events may or may not be ours. If a man 
wishes to acquaint himself with the real history of 



DOMESTIC LIFE. 97 

the world, with the spirit of the age, he must not 
go first to the state-house or the court-room. The 
subtle spirit of life must be sought in facts nearer. 
It is what is done and suffered in the house, in the 
constitution, in the temperament, in the personal his- 
tory, that has the profoundest interest for us. Fact 
is better than fiction, if only we could get pure fact. 
Do you tliink any rhetoric or any romance would 
get your ear from the wise gypsy who could tell 
straight on the real fortunes of the man ; who could 
reconcile your moral character and your natural his- 
tory ; who could explain your misfortunes, your fe- 
vers, your debts, your temperament, your habits of 
thought, your tastes, and, in every explanation, not 
sever you from the whole, but unite you to it ? Is 
it not plain that not in senates, or courts, or cham- 
bers of commerce, but in the dwelling-house must 
the true character and hope of the time be consulted ? 
These facts are, to be sure, harder to read. It is 
easier to count the census, or compute the square 
extent of a territory, to criticise its poHty, books, art, 
than to come to the persons and dwellings of men, 
and read their character and hope in their way of 
life. Yet we are always hovering round this better 
divination. In one form or another, we are always 
returning to it. The physiognomy and phrenol- 
ogy of to-day are rash and mechanical systems 
enough, but they rest on everlasting foundations. 
We are sure that the sacred form of man is not seen 



98 DOMESTIC LIFE. 

in these whimsical, pitiful, and sinister masks (masks 
which we wear and which we meet), these bloated 
and shrivelled bodies, bald heads, bead eyes, short 
winds, puny and precarious healths, and early 
deaths. We live ruins amidst ruins. The great 
facts are the near ones. The account of the body 
is to be sought in the mind. The history of your 
fortunes is written first in your life. 

Let us come, then, out of the public square, and 
enter the domestic precinct. Let us go to the sit- 
ting-room, the table-talk, and the expenditure of our 
contemporaries. An increased consciousness of the 
soul, you say, characterizes the period. Let us see 
if it has not only arranged the atoms at the circum- 
ference, but the atoms at the core. Does the house- 
hold obey an idea ? Do you see the man, — his 
form, genius, and aspiration, — in his economy? Is 
that translucent, thorough-lighted ? There should 
be nothino; confoundino; and conventional in econ- 
omy, but the genius and love of the man so conspic- 
uously marked in all his estate, that the eye that 
knew him should read his character in his property, 
in his grounds, in his ornaments, in every expense. 
A man's money should not follow the direction of 
his neighbor's money, but should represent to him 
the things he would willino-liest do with it. I am 
not one thing and my expenditure another. My 
expenditure is me. That our expenditure and our 
character are twain, is the vice of society. 



DOMESTIC LIFE. 99 

We ask the price of many things in shops and 
stalls, but some things each man buys without hes- 
itation, if it were only letters at the post-office, con- 
veyance in carriages and boats, tools for his work, 
books that are written to his condition, etc. Let him 
never buy anything else than what he wants, never 
subscribe at others' instance, never give unwillingly. 
Thus, a scholar is a literary foundation. All his 
expense is for Aristotle, Fabricius, Erasmus, and Pe- 
trarch. Do not ask him to help with his savings 
young drapers or grocers to stock their shops, or 
eager agents to lobby in legislatures, or join a com- 
pany to build a factory or a fishing-craft. These 
things are also to be done, but not by such as he. 
How could such a book as Plato's Dialogues have 
come down, but for the sacred savings of scholars 
and their fantastic appropriation of them ? 

Another man is a mechanical genius, an inventor 
of looms, a builder of ships, — a ship-building foun- 
dation, and could achieve nothing if he should dissi- 
pate himself on books or on horses. Another is a 
farmer, — an agricultural foundation ; another is a 
chemist, — and the same rule holds for all. We 
must not make believe with our money, but spend 
heartily, and buy up and not down. 

I am afraid that, so considered, our houses wdll 
not be found to have unity, and to express the best 
thought. The household, the calling, the friend- 
ships, of the citizen are not homogeneous. His 



100 DOMESTIC LIFE. 

house ought to show us his honest opinion of what 
makes his well-being when he rests among his kin- 
dred, and forgets all affectation, compliance, and 
even exertion of will. He brings home whatever 
commodities and ornaments have for years allured 
his pursuit, and his character must be seen in them. 
But what idea predominates in our houses ? Thrift 
first, then convenience and pleasure. Take off all 
the roofs, from street to street, and we shall seldom 
find the temple of any higher god than Prudence. 
The progress of domestic living has been in clean- 
liness, in ventilation, in health, in decorum, in count- 
less means and arts of comfort, in the concentration 
of all the utilities of every clime in each house. 
They are arranged for low benefits. The houses 
of the rich are confectioners' shops, where we get 
sweetmeats and wine ; the houses of the poor are 
imitations of these to the extent of their ability. 
With these ends housekeeping is not beautiful ; it 
cheers and raises neither the husband, the wife, nor 
the child ; neither the host, nor the guest ; it op- 
presses women. A house kept to the end of pru- 
dence is laborious without joy ; a house kept to the 
end of display is impossible to all but a few women, 
and their success is dearly bought. 

If we look at this matter curiously, it becomes 
dangerous. We need all the force of an idea to lift 
this load ; for the wealth and multiplication of con- 
venien(!es embarrass us, especially in northern cli- 



DOMESTIC LIFE. 101 

mates. The shortest enumeration of our wants in 
this rugged dimate appalls us by the multitude of 
things not easy to be done. And if you look at 
the multitude of particulars, one would say: Good 
housekeeping is impossible ; order is too precious a 
thing to dwell with men and women. See, in fami- 
lies where there is both substance and taste, at what 
expense any favorite punctuality is maintained. If 
the children, for example, are considered, dressed, 
dieted, attended, kept in proper company, schooled, 
and at home fostered by the parents, — - then does 
the hospitality of the house suffer ; friends are less 
carefully bestowed, the daily table less catered. If 
the hours of meals are punctual, the apartments are 
slovenly. If the linens and hangings are clean and 
fine, and the furniture good, the yard, the gar- 
den, the fences are neglected. If all are well at- 
tended, then must the master and mistress be 
studious of particulars at the cost of their own 
accomplishments and growth, — or persons are 
treated as things. 

The difficulties to be overcome must be freely 
admitted ; they are many and great. Nor are they 
to be disposed of by any criticism or amendment of 
particulars taken one at a time, but only by the 
arrano-ement of the household to a higrher end than 
those to which our dwellings are usually built and 
furnished. And is there any calamity more grave, 
or that more invokes the best good-will to remove 



102 DOMESTIC LIFE. 

it, than tins ? — to go from chamber to chamber, and 
see no beauty ; to find in the housemates no aim ; 
to hear an endless chatter and blast ; to be com- 
pelled to criticise ; to hear only to dissent and to be 
disgusted ; to find no invitation to what is good in 
us, and no receptacle fi^r what is wise ; — this is a 
great price to pay for sweet bread and warm lodg- 
ing, — being defrauded of affinity, of repose, of 
genial culture, and the inmost presence of beauty. 
It is a sufficient accusation of our ways of living, 
and certainly ought to open our ear to every good- 
minded reformer, that our idea of domestic well- 
being now needs wealth to execute it. Give me the 
means, says the wife, and your house shall not annoy 
your taste nor waste your time. On hearing this, 
we understand how these Means have come to be 
so omnipotent on earth. And indeed the love of 
wealth seems to grow chiefly out of the root of the 
love of the Beautiful. The desire of gold is not for 
gold. It is not the love of much wheat and wool 
and household-stuff". It is the means of freedom 
and benefit. We scorn shifts ; we desire the ele- 
gance of munificence ; we desire at least to put no 
stint or limit on our parents, relatives, guests, or de- 
pendents ; we desire to play the benefactor and the 
prince with our townsmen, with the stranger at the 
gate, with the bard, or the beauty, with the man or 
woman of worth, who alights at our door. How 
can we do this, if the wants of each day imprison 



DOMESTIC LIFE. 103 

US in lucrative labors, and constrain us to a contin- 
ual vigilance lest we be betrayed into expense ? 

Give us wealthy and the home shall exist. But 
that is a very imperfect and inglorious solution of 
the problem, and therefore no solution. " Give us 
wealth.^^ You ask too much. Few have wealth; 
but all must have a home. Men are not born 
rich ; and in getting wealth, the man is gener- 
ally sacrificed, and often is sacrificed without acquir- 
ing wealth at last. Besides, that cannot be the 
right answer ; — there are objections to wealth. 
Wealth is a shift. The wise man ano;les with him- 
self only, and with no meaner bait. Our whole use 
of wealth needs revision and reform. Generosity 
does not consist in giving money or money's worth. 
These so-called goods are only the shadow of good. 
To give money to a sufferer is only a come-ofif. It 
is only a postponement of the real payment, a bribe 
paid for silence, — a credit-system in which a paper 
promise to pay answers for the time instead of liqui- 
dation. We owe to man higher succors than food 
and fire. We owe to man man. If he is .sick, is 
unable, is mean-spirited and odious, it is because 
there is so much of his nature which is unlawfully 
withholden from him. He should be A^sited in this 
his prison with rebuke to the evil demons, with 
manly encouragement, with no mean-spirited offer 
of condolence because you have not money, or mean 
offer of money as the utmost benefit, but by your 



104 DOMESTIC LIFE. 

heroism, your purity, and your faith. You are to 
bring with you that spirit which is understanding, 
health and self-help. To offer him money in lieu 
of these is to do him the same wrong as when the 
bridegroom offers his betrothed viro;in a sum of 
monev to release him from his engagements. The 
great depend on their heart, not on their purse. 
Genius and virtue, like diamonds, are best plain-set, 
— set in lead, set in poverty. The greatest man in 
history was the poorest. How was it with the cap- 
tains and sages of Greece and Rome, with Socrates, 
with Epaminondas? Aristides was made general 
receiver of Greece, to collect the tribute which each 
state was to furnish against the barbarian. " Poor," 
says Plutarch, " when he set about it, poorer when 
he had finished it." How was it with jEmilius and 
Cato ? What kind of house was kept by Paul 
and John, — by Milton and Marvell, — by Samuel 
Johnson, — by Samuel Adams in Boston, and Jean 
Paul Richter at Baireuth ? 

I think it plain that this voice of communities 
and ages, ' Give us wealth, and the good household 
shall exist, ' is vicious, and leaves the whole diffi- 
culty untouched. It is better, certainly, in this 
form, ' Give us your labor, and the household 
begins.' I see not how serious labor, the labor of 
all and every day, is to be avoided ; and many things 
betoken a revolution of opinion and practice in 
regard to manual labor that may go far to aid our 



DOMESTIC LIFE. 105 

practical inquiry. Another age may divide the 
manual labor of the world more equally on all the 
members of society, and so make the labors of a few 
hours avail to the wants and add to the vio-or of the 
man. But the reform that applies itself to the house- 
hold must not be partial. It must correct the whole 
system of our social living. It must come with 
plain living and high thinking ; it must break up 
caste, and put domestic service on another founda- 
tion. It must come in connection with a true ac- 
ceptance by each man of his vocation, — not chosen 
by his parents or friends, but by his genius, with 
earnestness and love. 

Nor is this redress so hopeless as it seems. Cer- 
tainly, if we begin by reforming particulars of our 
present system, correcting a few evils and letting 
the rest stand, we shall soon give up in despair. 
For our social forms are very far from truth and 
equity. But the way to set the axe at the root of 
the tree is, to raise our aim. Let us understand, 
then, that a house should bear witness in all its 
economy that human culture is the end to which it 
is built and garnished. It stands there under the 
sun and moon to ends analogous, and not less noble 
than theirs. It is not for festivity, it is not for sleep : 
but the pine and the oak shall gladly descend from 
the mountains to uphold the roof of men as faithful 
and necessary as themselves ; to be the shelter al- 
ways open to good and true persons ; — a hall which 



106 DOMESTIC LIFE. 

shines with sincerity, brows ever tranquil, and a 
demeanor impossible to disconcert ; whose inmates 
know what they want ; who do not ask your house 
how theirs should be kept. They have aims : they 
cannot pause for trifles. The diet of the house does 
not create its order, but knowledge, character, action, 
absorb so much life and yield so much entertainment 
that the refectory has ceased to be so curiously 
studied. With a change of aim has followed a change 
of the w^hole scale by which men and things were 
wont to be measured. Wealth and poverty are seen 
for what they are. It begins to be seen that the 
poor are only they who feel poor, and poverty con- 
sists in feeling poor. The rich, as we reckon them, 
and among them the very rich, in a true scale would 
be found very indigent and ragged. The great 
make us feel, first of all, the indifference of circum- 
stances. They call into activity the higher percep- 
tions, and subdue the low habits of comfort and 
luxury ; but the higher perceptions find their objects 
everywhere : only the low habits need palaces and 
banquets. 

Let a man, then, say. My house is here in the 
county, for the culture of the county; — an eating- 
house and sleeping-house for travellers it shall be, 
but it shall be much more. I pray you, excel- 
lent wife, not to cumber yourself and me to get a 
rich dinner for this man or this woman who has 
alighted at our gate, nor a bedchamber made ready 



DOMESTIC LIFE. 107 

at too great a cost. These things, if they are curi- 
ous in, they can get for a dollar at any village. But 
let this stranger, if he will, in your looks, in your 
accent and behavior, read your heart and earnestness, 
your thought and will, which he cannot buy at any 
price, in any village or city, and which he may well 
travel fifty miles, and dine sparely and sleep hard, in 
order to behold. Certainly, let the board be spread 
^nd let the bed be dressed for the traveller ; but let 
not the emphasis of hospitality lie in these things. 
Honor to the house where they are simple to the 
verge of hardship, so that there the intellect is awake 
and reads the laws of the universe, tlie soul worships 
truth and love, honor and courtesy flow into all 
deeds. 

There was never a country in the world which 
could so easily exhibit this heroism as ours ; never 
any where the State has made such efficient provis- 
ion for popular education, where intellectual enter- 
tainment is so within reach of youthful ambition. 
The poor man's son is educated. There is man}'- a 
humble house in every city, in every town, where 
talent and taste, and sometimes genius, dwell with 
poverty and labor. Who has not seen, and who can 
see unmoved, under a low roof, the eager, blushing 
boys discharging as they can their household chores, 
and hastening into the sitting-room to the study of 
to-morrow's merciless lesson, yet stealing time to 
read one chapter more of the novel hardly smuggled 



108 DOMESTIC LIFE. 

into the tolerance of father and mother, — atoning 
for tlie same by some pages of Plutarch or Gold- 
smith ; the warm sympathy with which they kindle 
each other in school-yard, or in barn or wood-shed, 
with scraps of poetry or song, with phrases of the 
last oration, or mimicry of the orator ; the youthful 
criticism, on Sunday, of the sermons ; the school 
declamation faithfully rehearsed at home, sometimes 
to the fatigue, sometimes to the admiration of sisters; 
the first solitary joys of literary vanity, when the 
translation or the theme has been completed, sitting 
alone near the top of the house ; the cautious com- 
parison of the attractive advertisementof the arrival 
of Macready, Booth, or Kemble, or of the discourse 
of a well-known speaker, with the expense of the 
entertainment ; the affectionate delight with which 
they greet the return of each one after the early 
separations which school or business require ; the 
foresight with which, during such absences, they 
hive the honey which opportunity offers, for the ear 
and imagination of the others ; and the unrestrained 
glee with which they disburden themselves of their 
early mental treasures when the holidays bring them 
again together? What is the hoop that holds them 
stanch ? It is the iron band of poverty, of necessity, 
of austerity, which, excluding them from the sensu- 
al enjoyments which make other boys too early old, 
has directed their activity in safe and right channels, 
and made them, despite themselves, reverers of the 



DOMESTIC LIFE. 109 

grand, the beautiful, and the good. Ah ! short-sighted 
students of books, of Nature, and of man ! too happy, 
could they know their advantages. They pine for 
freedom from that mild parental yoke ; they sigh for 
fine clothes, for rides, for the theatre, and premature 
freedom and dissipation, which others possess. Woe 
to them, if their wishes were crowned ! The angels 
that dwell with them, and are weaving laurels of 
life for their youthful brows, are Toil, and Want, 
and Truth, and Mutual Faith. 

In many parts of true economy a cheering lesson 
may be learned from the mode of life and manners 
of the later Romans, as described to us in the letters 
of the younger Pliny. Nor can I resist the temp- 
tation of quoting so trite an instance as the noble 
housekeeping of Lord Falkland in Clarendon : " His 
house beino; within little more than ten miles from 
Oxford, he contracted familiarity and friendship 
with the most polite and accurate men of that Uni- 
versity, who found such an immenseness of wit, and 
such a solidity of judgment in him, so infinite a 
fancy, bound in by a most logical ratiocination, such 
a vast knowledge that he was not ignorant in any- 
thing, yet such an excessive humility, as if he had 
known nothing, that they frequently resorted and 
dwelt with him, as in a college situated in a purer 
air ; so that his house was a university in a less vol- 
ume, whither they came, not so much for repose 
as study, and to examine and refine those grosser 



110 DOMESTIC LIFE. 

propositions which laziness and consent made cur- 
rent in vulgar conversation." 

I honor that man whose ambition it is, not to win 
laurels in the state or the army, not to be a jurist or 
a naturalist, not to be a poet or a commander, but to 
be a master of living well, and to administer the of- 
fices of master or servant, of husband, father, and 
friend. But it requires as much breadth of power 
for this as for those other functions, — as much, or 
more, — and the reason for the failure is the same. 
I think the vice of our housekeeping is, that it does 
not hold man sacred. The vice of government, the 
vice of education, the vice of religion, is one with 
that of private life. 

In the old fables, we used to read of a cloak 
brought from fairy-land as a gift for the fairest and 
purest in Prince Arthur's court. It was to be her 
prize whom it would fit. Every one was eager to 
try it on, but it would fit nobody : for one it was a 
world too wide, for the next it dragged on the 
ground, and for the third it shrunk to a scarf. 
They, of course, said that the devil was in the man- 
tle, for really the truth was in the mantle, and was 
exposing the- ugliness which each would fain con- 
ceal. All drew back with terror from the garment. 
The innocent Genelas alone could wear it. In like 
manner, every man is provided in his thought with 
a measure of man which he applies to every passen 
ger. Unhappily, not one in many thousands comes 



DOMESTIC LIFE. Ill 

up to the stature and proportions of the model. 
Neither does the measurer himself; neither do the 
people in the street; neither do the select individ- 
uals whom he admires, — the heroes of the race. 
When he inspects them critically, he discovers that 
their aims are low, that they are too quickly satis- 
tied. He observes the swiftness with which life cul- 
minates, and the humility of the expectations of the 
greatest part of men. To each occurs, soon after 
the age of puberty, some event, or society, or way 
of living, which becomes the crisis of life, and the 
chief fact in their history. In woman, it is love and 
marriage (which is more reasonable) ; and yet it is 
pitiful to date and measure all the facts and sequel 
of an unfolding life from such a youthful, and gen- 
erally inconsiderate, period as the age of courtship 
and marriage. In men, it is their place of educa- 
tion, choice of an employment, settlement in a town, 
or removal to the East or to the West, or some 
other magnified trifle, which makes the meridian 
moment, and all the after years and actions only de- 
rive interest from their relation to that. Hence it 
icomes that we soon catch the trick of each man's 
conversation, and, knowing his two or three main 
facts, anticipate what he thinks of each new topic 
that rises. It is scarcely less perceivable in educat- 
ed men, so called, than in the uneducated. I have 
seen finely endowed men at college festivals, ten, 
twenty years after they had left the halls, return- 



112 DOMESTIC LIFE. 

ing, as it seemed, the same boys who went aw^ay. 
The same jokes pleased, the same straws tickled; 
the manhood and offices they brought thither at 
this return seemed mere ornamental masks : un- 
derneath they were boys yet. We never come to 
be citizens of the world, but are still villagers, who 
think that every thing in their petty town is a little 
superior to the same thing anywhere else. In each 
the circumstance signalized differs, but in each it is 
made the coals of an ever-burning egotism. In one, 
it was his going to sea ; in a second, the difficulties 
he combated in going to college ; in a third, his 
journey to the West, or his voyage to Canton ; in 
a fourth, his coming out of the Quaker Society ; in 
a fifth, his new diet and regimen ; in a sixth, his 
coming forth from the abolition organizations ; and 
in a seventh, his going into them. It is a life of 
toys and trinkets. We are too easily pleased. 

I think this sad result appears in the manners. 
The men we see in each other do not give us the 
imao-e and likeness of man. The men we see are 
whipped through the world ; they are harried, 
wrinkled, anxious ; they all seem the hacks of some 
invisible riders. How seldom do we behold tran- 
quillity ! We have never yet seen a man. We do 
not know the majestic manners that belong to him, 
which appease and exalt the beholder. There are 
no divine persons with us, and the multitude do not 
hasten to be divine. And yet we hold fast, all 



DOMESTIC LIFE. 113 

our lives long, a faith in a better life, in better men, 
in clean and noble relations, notwithstanding our 
total inexperience of a true society. Certainly, this 
was not the intention of nature, to produce, with 
all this immense expenditure of means and power, 
so cheap and humble a result. The aspirations in 
the heart after the good and true teach us better, — 
nay, the men themselves suggest a better life. 

Every individual nature has its own beauty. One 
is struck in every company, at every fireside, with 
the riches of nature, when he hears so many new 
tones, all musical, sees in each person original man- 
ners, which have a proper and peculiar charm, and 
reads new expressions of face. He perceives that 
nature has laid for each the foundations of a divine 
buildinoc, if the soul will build thereon. There is no 
face, no form, which one cannot in fancy associate 
with great power of intellect or with generosity of 
soul. In our experience, to be sure, beauty is not, 
as it ought to be, the dower of man and of woman 
as invariably as sensation. Beauty is, even in the 
beautiful, occasional, — or, as one has said, culmi- 
nating and perfect only a single moment, before 
which it is unripe, and after which it is on the wane. 
But beauty is never quite absent from our eyes. 
Every face, every figure, suggests its own right and 
sound estate. Our friends are not their own highest 
form. But let the hearts they have agitated witness 
what power has lurked in the traits of these struc- 



114 DOMESTIC LIFE. 

tures of clay that pass and repass us ! The secret 
power of form over the imagination and affections 
transcends all our philosophy. The first glance we 
meet may satisfy us that matter is the vehicle of 
higher powers than its own, and that no laws of line 
or surface can ever account for the inexhaustible 
expressiveness of form. We see heads that turn on 
the pivot of the spine, — no more ; and we see 
heads that seem to turn on a pivot as deep as the 
axle of the world, — so slow, and lazily, and great, 
they move. We see on the lip of our companion the 
presence or absence of the great masters of thought 
and poetry to his mind. We read in his brow, on 
meeting him after many years, that he is where we 
left him, or that he has made great strides. 

Whilst thus nature and the hints we draw from 
man suggest a true and lofty life, a household equal 
to the beauty and grandeur of this world, especial- 
ly we learn the same lesson from those best relations 
to individual men which the heart is always prompt- 
ing us to form. Happy will that house be in which 
the relations are formed from character, after the 
highest, and not after the lowest order ; the house 
in which character marries, and not confusion and 
a miscellany of unavowable motives. Then shall 
marriage be a covenant to secure to either party the 
sweetness and honor of being a calm, continuing, 
inevitable benefactor to the other. Yes, and the 
sufficient reply to the sceptic who doubts the com- 



DOMESTIC LIFE. 115 

petence of man to elevate and to be elevated is in 
that desire and power to stand in joyful and enno- 
bling intercourse with individuals, which makes the 
faith and the practice of all reasonable men. 

The ornament of a house is the friends who fre- 
quent it. There is no event greater in life than the 
appearance of new persons about our hearth, except 
it be the progress of the character which draws them. 
It has been finely added by Landor to his definition 
of the great man^ " It is he who can call together 
the most select company when it pleases him.'' A 
verse of the old Greek Menander remains, which 
runs in translation : — 

*' Not on the store of sprightly wine, 

Nor plenty of delicious meats, 
Though generous Nature did design 

To court us with perpetual treats, — 
'T is not on these we for content depend. 
So much as on the shadow of a Friend." 

It is the happiness which, where it is truly known, 
postpones all other satisfactions, and makes politics 
and commerce and churches cheap. For we figure 
to ourselves, — do we not ? — that when men shall 
meet as they should, as states meet, — each a bene- 
factor, a shower of falling stars, so rich with deeds, 
with thoughts, with so much accomplishment, — ^it 
shall be the festival of nature, which all things sym- 
bolize ; and perhaps Love is only the highest symbol 
of Friendship, as all other things seem symbols of 



116 DOMESTIC LIFE. 

love. In the progress of each man's character, his 
relations to the best men, which at first seem only 
the romances of youth, acquire a graver importance ; 
and he will have learned the lesson of life who is 
skilful in the ethics of friendship. 

Beyond its primary ends of the conjugal, parental, 
and amicable relations, the household should cherish 
the beautiful arts and the sentiment of veneration. 

1. Whatever brings the dweller into a finer life, 
what educates his eye, or ear, or hand, whatever 
purifies and enlarges him, may well find place there. 
And yet let him not think that a property in beauti- 
ful objects is necessary to his apprehension of them, 
and seek to turn his house into a museum. Rather 
let the noble practice of the Greeks find place in 
our society, and let the creations of the plastic arts 
be collected with care in galleries by the piety and 
taste of the people, and yielded as freely as the sun- 
light to all. Meantime, be it remembered, we are 
artists ourselves, and competitors, each one, with 
Phidias and Raphael in the production of what is 
graceful or grand. The fountain of beauty is the 
heart, and every generous thought illustrates the 
walls of your chamber. Why should we owe our 
power of attracting our friends to pictures and 
vases, to cameos and architecture ? Why should 
we convert ourselves into showmen and append- 
ages to our fine houses and our works of art ^ 



DOMESTIC LIFE. 117 

If by love and nobleness we take up into our- 
selves the beauty we admire, we shall spend it 
again on all around us. The man, the woman, 
needs not the embellishment of canvas and marble, 
whose every act is a subject for the sculptor, and 
to whose eye the gods and nymphs never appear 
ancient ; for they know by heart the whole instinct 
of majesty. 

I do not undervalue the fine instruction which 
statues and pictures give. But I think the public 
museum in each town will one day relieve the 
private house of this charge of owning and exhibit- 
ing them. I go to Rome and see on the walls of the 
Vatican the Transfiguration, painted by Raphael, 
reckoned the first picture in the world ; or in the 
Sistine Chapel I see the grand sibyls and prophets, 
painted in fresco by Michael Angelo, — which have 
every day now for three hundred years inflamed the 
imagination and exalted the piety of what vast mul- 
titudes of men of all nations ! I wish to bring; home 
to my children and my friends copies of these admi- 
rable forms, which I can find in the shops of the en- 
gravers ; but I do not wish the vexation of owning 
them. I wish to find in my own town a library 
and museum which is the property of the town, 
where I can deposit this precious treasure, where 1 
and my children can see it from time to time, and 
where it has its proper place among hundreds of 
such donations from other citizens who have bi'ought 



118 DOMESTIC LIFE. 

thither whatever articles they have judged to be 
in their nature rather a pubHc than a private prop- 
erty. 

A collection of this kind, the property of each 
town, would dignify the town, and we should love 
and respect our neighbors more. Obviously, it 
would be easy for every town to discharge this 
truly municipal duty. Every one of us would 
gladly contribute his share ; and the more gladly, 
the more considerable the institution had become. 

2. Certainly, not aloof from this homage to beau- 
ty, but in strict connection therewith, the house will 
come to be esteemed a Sanctuary. The language 
of a ruder age has given to common law the maxim 
that every man's house is his castle : the progress of 
truth will make every house a shrine. Will not 
man one day open his eyes and see how dear he is 
to the soul of Nature, — how near it is to him ? 
Will he not see, through all he miscalls accident, 
that Law prevails for ever and ever ; that his private 
being is a part of it ; that its home is in his own un- 
sounded heart ; that his economy, his labor, his good 
and bad fortune, his health and manners, are all a 
curious and exact demonstration in miniature of the 
Genius of the Eternal Providence ? When he per- 
ceives the Law, he ceases to despond. Whilst he 
sees it, every thought and act is raised, and be- 
comes an act of religion. Does the consecration 



DOMESTIC LIFE. 119 

of Sunday confess the desecration of the entire 
week? Does the consecration of the church con- 
fess the profanation of the house ? Let us read 
the incantation backward. Let the man stand on 
his feet. Let rehgion cease to be occasional ; and 
the pulses of thought that go to the borders of the 
universe, let them proceed from the bosom of the 
Household. 

These are the consolations, — these are the ends 
to which the household is instituted and the rooftree 
stands. If these are sought, and in any good degree 
attained, can the State, can commerce, can climate, 
can the labor of many for one, yield anything better, 
or half as good ? Beside these aims. Society is weak 
and the State an intrusion. I think that the heroism 
which at this day would make on us the impression 
of Epaminondas and Phocion must be that of a do- 
mestic conqueror. He who shall bravely and grace- 
fully subdue this Gorgon of Convention and Fashion, 
and show men how to lead a clean, handsome, and 
heroic life amid the beggarly elements of our cities 
and villages ; whoso shall teach me how to eat my 
meat and take my repose, and deal with men, with- 
out any shame following, will restore the life of man 
to splendor, and make his own name dear to all his- 
tory. 



FARMING. 



FARMING. 

The glory of the farmer is that, in the division of 
labors, it is his part to create. All trade rests at 
last on his primitive activity. He stands close to 
nature ; he obtains from the earth the bread and the 
meat. The food which was not, he causes to be. 
The first farmer was the first man, and all historic 
nobility rests on possession and use of land. Men 
do not like hard work, but every man has an ex- 
ceptional respect for tillage, and a feeling that this 
is the original calling of his race, that he himself is 
only excused from it by some circumstance which 
made him delegate it for a time to other hands. 
If he have not some skill which recommends him to 
the farmer, some product for which the farmer will 
give him corn, he must himself return into his due 
place among the planters. And the profession has 
in all eyes its ancient charm, as standing nearest 
to God, the first cause. 

Then the beauty of nature, the tranquillity and 
innocence of the countryman, his independence, and 
his pleasing arts, — the care of bees, of poultry, of 
sheep, of cows, the dairy, the care of hay, of fruits, 



124 FAEMING. 

of orchards and forests, and the reaction of these on 
the workman, in giving him a strengtii and plain 
dignity, like the face and manners of nature, all 
men acknowledge. All men keep the farm in 
reserve as an asylum where, in case of mischance, 
tc hide their poverty, — or a solitude, if they do 
not succeed in society. And who knows how many 
glances of remorse are turned this w^ay from the 
bankrupts of trade, from mortified pleaders in 
courts and senates, or from the victims of idleness 
and pleasure? Poisoned by town life and town 
vices, the sufferer resolves : ' Well, my children, 
whom I have injured, shall go back to the land, to 
be recruited and cured by that which should have 
been my nursery, and now shall be their hospital.' 

The farmer's office is precise and important, but 
you must not try to paint him in rose-color ; you 
cannot make pretty compliments to fate and gravi- 
tation, whose minister he is. He represents the 
necessities. It is the beauty of the great economy 
of the world that makes his comeliness. He bends 
to the order of the seasons, the weather, the soils 
and crops, as the sails of a ship bend to the wind. 
He represents continuous hard labor, year in, year 
out, and small gains. He is a slow person, timed 
to nature, and not to city watches. He takes the 
pace of seasons, plants, and chemistry. Nature never 
hurries : atom by atom, little by little, she achieves 
her work. The lesson one learns in fishing, yacht- 



r ARMING. 225 

ing, hunting, or planting, is the manners of Nature ; 
patience with the delays of wind and sun, delays of 
the seasons, bad weather, excess or lack of water, 
— patience with the slowness of our feet, with the 
parsimony of our strength, with the largeness of sea 
and land we must traverse, etc. The farmer times 
himself to Nature, and acquires that livelong patience 
which belongs to her. Slow, narrow man'', his rule 
is, that the earth shall feed and clothe him ; and he 
must wait for his crop to grow. His entertainments, 
his hberties, and his spending must be on a farmer's 
scale, and not on a merchant's. It were as false for 
farmers to use a wholesale and massy expense, as 
for states to use a minute economy. But if thus 
pinched on one side, he has compensatory advan- 
tages. He is permanent, clings to his land as the 
rocks do. In the town where I live, farms remain 
in the same families for seven and eight genera- 
tions ; and most of the first settlers (in 1635), 
should they reappear on the farms to-day, would 
find their own blood and names still in possession. 
And the like fact holds in the surrounding towns. 

This hard work will always be done by one kind 
of man ; not by scheming speculators, nor by sol- 
diers, nor professors, nor readers of Tennyson ; but 
by men of endurance, — deep-chested, long-winded, 
tough, slow and sure, and timely. The farmer haa 
a great health, and the appetite of health, and means 
to his end: he has broad lands for his home, wood to 



126 FARMING. 

burn great fires, plenty of plain food ; his milk, at 
.east, is unwatered ; and for sleep, he has cheaper 
and better and more of it than citizens. 

He has grave trusts confided to him. In the 
great household of Nature, the farmer stands at 
the door of the bread-room, and weighs to each 
his loaf. It is for him to say whether men shall 
marry or not. Early marriages and the number 
of births are indissolubly connected with abundance 
of food ; or, as Burke said, " Man breeds at the 
mouth.'* Then he is the Board of Quarantine. 
The farmer is a hoarded capital of health, as the 
farm is the capital of wealth ; and it is from him 
that the health and powei', moral and intellectual, 
of the cities came. The city is always recruited 
from the country. The men in cities who are the 
centres of energy, the driving-wheels of trade, pol- 
itics, or practical arts, and the women of beauty 
and genius are the children or grandchildren of 
farmers, and are spending the energies which their 
fathers' hardy, silent life accumulated in frosty fur-: 
rows, in poverty, necessity, and darkness. 

He is the continuous benefactor. He who digs a 
well, constructs a stone fountain, plants a grove of 
trees by the roadside, plants an orchard, builds a 
durable house, reclaims a swamp, or so much as puts 
a stone seat by the w^ayside, makes the land so far 
lovely and desirable, makes a fortune wdiich he can- 
not carry away Avith him, but which is useful to his 



FARMING. 127 

country long afterwards. Tlie man that works at 
home helps society at large with somewhat more of 
certainty than he who devotes himself to charities. 
If it be true that, not by votes of political parties, but 
by the eternal laws of political economy, slaves are 
driven out of a slave State as fast as it is surrounded 
by free States, then the true abolitionist is the farmer, 
who, heedless of laws and constitutions, stands all 
day in the field, investing his labor in the land, and 
making a product with which no forced labor can 
compete. 

"We commonly say that the rich man can speak 
the truth, can afford honesty, can afford indepen- 
dence of opinion and action ; — and that is the theory 
of nobility. But it is the rich man in a true sense, 
that is to say, not the man of large income and large 
expenditure, but solely the man whose outlay is less 
than his income and is steadily kept so. 

In English factories, the boy that watches the 
loom, to tie the thread when the wheel stops to indi- 
cate that a thread is broken, is called a minder. 
And in this great factory of our Copernican globe, 
shifting its slides ; rotating its constellations, times, 
and tides ; bringing now the day of planting, then 
of watering, then of weeding, then of reaping, then 
of curing and storing, — the farmer is the 77iinder. 
His machine is of colossal proportions, — the diam- 
eter of the water-wheel, the arms of the levers, the 
power of the battery, are out of all mechanic meas- 



128 FARMING. 

ure ; — and it takes him long to understand its 
parts and its working. This pump never " sucks " ; 
these screws are never loose ; tliis machine is never 
out of gear ; the vat and piston, wheels and tires, 
never wear out, but are self-repairing. 

Who are the farmer's servants ? Not the Irish, 
nor the coolies, but Geology and Chemistry, the 
quarry of the air, the water of the brook, the light- 
ning of the cloud, the castings of the worm, the 
plough of the frost. Long before he was born, the 
sun of ages decomposed the rocks, mellowed his land, 
soaked it with light and heat, covered it with vege- 
table film, then with forests, and accumulated the 
sphagnum whose decays made the peat of his meadow. 

Science has shown the great circles in which 
nature works ; the manner in which marine plants 
balance the marine animals, as the land plants sup- 
ply the oxygen which the animals consume, and 
the animals the carbon which the plants absorb. 
These activities are incessant. Nature works on a 
method of all for each and each for all. The strain 
that is made on one point bears on every arch and 
foundation of the structure. There is a perfect soli- 
darity. You cannot detach an atom from its hold- 
ings, or strip off from it the electricity, gravitation, 
chemic affinity, or the relation to light and heat, 
and leave the atom bare. No, it brings with it its 
universal ties. 

Nature, Hke a cautious testator, ties up her estate 



FARMING. 129 

SO as not to bestow it all on one generation, but has 
a forelooking tenderness and equal regard to tKe 
next and the next, and the fourth, and the fortieth 
age. 

There lie the inexhaustible magazines. The 
eternal rocks, as we call them, have held their oxy- 
gen or lime undiminished, entire, as it was. No 
particle of oxygen can rust or wear, but has the 
same energy as on the first morning. The good 
rocks, those patient waiters, say to him : ' We have 
the sacred power as we received it. We have not 
failed of our trust, and now — when in our immense 
day the hour is at last* struck — take the gas we have 
hoarded ; mingle it with water ; and let it be free to 
grow in plants and animals, and obey the thought 
of man.' 

The earth works for him ; the earth is a machine 
which yields almost gratuitous service to every ap- 
plication of intellect. Every plant is a manufacturer 
of soil. In the stomach of the plant development 
begins. The tree can draw on the whole air, the 
whole earth, on all the rolling main. The plant 
is all suction-pipe, — imbibing from the ground by 
its root, from the air by its leaves, with all its 
might. 

The air works for him. The atmosphere, a 
sharp solvent, drinks the essence and spirit of 
every solid on the globe, — a menstruum which 
melts the mountains into it. Air is matter subdued 



130 FARMING. 

by heat. As the sea is the grand receptacle of all 
rivers, so the air is the receptacle from which all 
things spring, and into which they all return. The 
invisible and creeping air takes form and solid mass. 
Our senses are sceptics, and believe only the im- 
pression of the moment, and do not believe the 
chemical fact that these huge mountain-chains are 
made up of gases and rolling wind. But Nature is 
as subtle as she is strong. She turns her capital 
day by day ; deals never with dead, but ever with 
quick subjects. All things are flowing, even those 
that seem immovable. The adamant is always pass- 
ing into smoke. The plants imbibe the materials 
which they want from the air and the ground. 
They burn, that is, exhale and decompose their 
own bodies into the air and earth ao;ain. The ani- 
mal burns, or undergoes the like perpetual consump- 
tion. The earth burns, — the mountains burn and 
decompose, — slower, but incessantly. It is almost 
inevitable to push the generalization up into higher 
parts of nature, rank over rank into sentient beings. 
Nations burn with internal fire of thought and affec- 
tion, which wastes while it works. We shall find 
finer combustion and finer fuel. Intellect is a fire : 
rash and pitiless it melts this wonderful bone-house 
which is called man. Genius even, as it is the great- 
est good, is the greatest harm. Whilst all thus 
burns, — the universe in a blaze kindled from the 
torch of the sun, — it needs a perpetual tempering, 



FARMING. 131 

a phlegm, a sleep, atmospheres of azote, deluges of 
water, to check the fury of the conflagration; a 
hoarding to check the spending ; a centripetence 
equal to the centrifugence : and this is invariably 
supplied. 

The railroad dirt-cars are good excavators ; but 
there is no porter like Gravitation, who will bring 
down any weights which man cannot carry, and 
if he wants aid, knows where to find his fellow- 
laborers. ^ Water works in masses, and sets its ir- 
resistible shoulder to your mills or your ships, or 
transports vast boulders of rock in its iceberg a 
thousand miles. But its far greater power de- 
pends on its talent of becoming little, and entering 
the smallest holes and pores. By this agency, car- 
rying in solution elements needful to every plant, 
the vegetable world exists. 

But as I said, we must not paint the farmer in 
rose-color. Whilst these grand energies have 
wrought for him, and made his task possible, he is 
habitually engaged in small economies, and is taught 
the power that lurks in petty things. Great is the 
force of a few simple arrangements ; for instance, 
the powers of a fence. On the prairie you wander 
a hundred miles, and hardly find a stick or a stone. 
At rare intervals, a thin oak opening has been 
spared, and every such section has been long occu- 
pied. But the farmer manages to procure wood 
from far, puts up a rail fence, and at once the 



132 FARMING 

seeds sprout and the oaks rise. It was only 
browsing and fire wdiich had kept them down. 
Plant fruit-trees by the roadside, and their fniit 
will never be allowed to ripen. Draw a pine fence 
about them, and for fifty years they mature for the 
owner their delicate fruit. There is a great deal 
of enchantment in a chestnut rail or picketed pine 
boards. 

Nature suggests every economical expedient 
somewhere on a great scale. Set out a pine- 
tree, and it dies in the first year, or lives a poor 
spindle. But Nature drops a pine-cone in Mari- 
posa, and it lives fifteen centuries, grows three or 
four hundred feet high, and thirty in diameter, — 
grows in a grove of giants, like a colonnade of 
Thebes. Ask the tree how it was done. It did 
not grow on a ridge, but in a basin, where it found 
deep soil, cold enough and dry enough for the pine ; 
defended itself from the sun by growing in groves, 
and from the wind by the walls of the mountain. 
The roots that shot deepest, and the stems of hap- 
piest exposure, drew the nourishment from the rest, 
until the less thrifty perished and manured the 
soil for the stronger, and the mammoth Sequoias rose 
to their enormous proportions. The traveller who 
saw them remembered his orchard at home, where 
every year, in the destroying wind, his forlorn 
trees pined like suffering virtue. In September, 
when the pears hang heaviest, and are taking from- 



FARMING. 135 

the sun their gay colors, comes usually a gusty day 
which shakes the whole garden, and throws down 
the heaviest fruit in bruised heaps. The planter 
took the hint of the Sequoias, built a high wall, 
or — better — surrounded the orchard with a nurs- 
ery of birches and evergreens. Thus he had the 
mountain basin in miniature ; and his pears grew to 
the size of melons, and the vines beneath them ran 
an eighth of a mile. Bat this shelter creates a new 
climate. The wall that keeps off the strong wind 
keeps off the cold wind. The high wall reflecting 
the heat back on tlie soil gives that acre a quadruple 
share of sunshine, 

" Enclosing in tlie garden square 
A dead and standing pool of air/* 

and makes a little Cuba within it, whilst all without 
is Labrador. 

The chemist comes to his aid every year by fol- 
lowing out some new hint drawn from nature, and 
now affirms that this dreary space occupied by the 
farmer is needless : he will concentrate his kitchen- 
garden into a box of one or two rods square, will 
take the roots into his laboratory ; the vines and 
stalks and stems may go sprawling about in the 
fields outside, he will attend to the roots in his tub, 
gorge them with food that is good for them. The 
smaller his garden, the better he can feed it, and 
the larger the crop. As he nursed his Thanksgiving 
turkeys on bread and milk, so he will pamper his 



134 FARMING. 

peaches and grapes on the viands they like best. 
If they have an appetite for potash, or salt, or iron, 
or ground bones, (^r even now and then for a dead 
hog, he vrill indulge them. They keep the secret 
well, and never tell on your table whence they drew 
their sunset complexion or their dehcate flavors. 

See what the farmer accomplishes by a cartload of 
tiles : he alters the climate by letting off water which 
kept the land cold through constant evaporation, 
and allows the warm rain to brinor down into the 
roots the temperature of the air and of the surface- 
soil ; and he deepens the soil, since the discharge 
of this standing water allows the roots of his plants 
to penetrate below the surface to the suosoil, and 
accelerates the ripening of the crop. The town of 
Concord is one of the oldest towns in this country, 
far on now in its third century. The selectmen 
have once in every five years perambulated the boun- 
daries, and yet, in this very year, a large quantity 
of land has been discovered and added to the town 
without a murmur of complaint from any quarter. 
By drainage we went down to a subsoil we did not 
know, and have found there is a Concord under old 
Concord, which we are now getting the best crops 
from ; a Middlesex under Middlesex; and, in fine, 
that Massachusetts has a basement story more valu- 
able, and that promises to pay a better rent, than all 
the superstructure. But these tiles have acquired by 
tissoc'iation a ]iew interest. These tiles are political 



FARMING. 135 

economists, confuters of Malthus and Ricardo ; they 
are so many Young Americans announcing a better 
era, — more bread. They drain the land, make it 
sweet and friable ; have made English Chat Moss a 
garden, and will now do as much for the Dismal 
Swamp. But beyond this benefit, they are the text 
of better opinions and better auguries for mankind. 

There has been a nightmare bred in England of 
indigestion and spleen among landlords and loom- 
lords, namely, the dogma that men breed too fast 
for the powers of the soil ; that men multiply in a 
geometrical ratio, whilst corn only in an arithmeti- 
cal; and hence that, the more prosperous we are, the 
faster we approach these frightful limits: nay, the 
plight of every new generation is worse than of the 
foregoing, because the first comers take up the best 
lands ; the next, the second best ; and each succeed- 
ing wave of population is driven to poorer, so that the 
land is ever yielding less returns to enlarging hosts 
of eaters. Henry Carey of Philadelphia replied: 
* Not so, Mr. Malthus, but just the opposite of so is 
the fact.' 

The first planter, the savage, without helpers, with- 
out tools, looking chiefly to safety from his enemy, — 
man or beast, — takes poor land. The better lands 
are loaded with timber, which he cannot clear ; they 
need drainage, which he cannot attempt. He can- 
not plough, or fell trees, or drain the rich swamp. 
He is a poor creature ; he scratches with a sharp 



136 FARMNG. 

stick, lives in a cave or a hutch, has no road but the 
trail of the moose or bear ; he lives on their flesh 
when he can kill one, on roots and fruits when he 
cannot. He falls, and is lame ; he coughs, he has a 
stitch in his side, he has a fever and chills : when he 
is hungry, he cannot always kill and eat a bear ; 
— chances of war, — sometimes the bear eats him. 
'T is long before he digs or plants at all, and then 
only a patch. Later he learns that his planting is 
better than hunting ; that the earth works faster for 
him than he can work for himself, — works for him 
when he is asleep, when it rains, when heat over- 
comes him. The, sunstroke which knocks him down 
brings his corn up. As his family thrive, and other 
planters come up around him, he begins to fell trees, 
and clear good land ; and when, by and by, there 
is more skill, and tools and roads, the new genera- 
tions are strong enough to open the lowlands, where 
the wash of mountains has accumulated the best 
soil, which yield a hundred-fold the former crops. 
The last lands are the best lands. It needs science 
and great numbers to cultivate the best lands, and 
in the best manner. Thus true political economy 
is not mean, but liberal, and on the pattern of the 
sun and sky. Population increases in the ratio of 
morality : credit exists in the ratio of morality. 

Meantime we cannot enumerate the incidents and 
ao;ents of the farm without revertino^ to their influ- 
ence on the farmer > He carries out this cumulative 



FARMING. 137 

preparation of means to their last effect. This crust 
of soil which ages have refined he refines again for 
the feeding of a civil and instructed people. The 
great elements with which he deals cannot leave 
him unaffected, or unconscious of his ministiy; but 
their influence somewhat resembles that which the 
same Nature has on the child, — of subduing and si- 
lencing him. We see the farmer with pleasure and 
respect, when we think what powders and utilities 
are so meekly worn. He knows every secret of 
labor : he changes the face of the landscape. Put 
him on a new planet, and he would know where to 
begin ; yet there is no arrogance in his bearing, but 
a perfect gentleness. The farmer stands well on 
the world. Plain in manners as in dress, he would 
not shine in palaces ; he is absolutely unknown and 
inadmissible therein ; living or dying, he never shall 
be heard of in them ; yet the drawing-room heroes 
put dow^n beside him would shrivel in his pres- 
ence, — he solid and unexpressive, they expressed 
to gold-leaf. But he stands well on the world, 
— as Adam did, as an Indian does, as Homer's 
heroes, Agamemnon or Achilles, do. He is a per- 
son whom a poet of any clime — Milton, Firdusi, 
or Cervantes — would appreciate as being really 
a piece of the old Nature, comparable to sun and 
moon, rainbow and flood ; because he is, as all nat- 
ural persons are, representative of Nature as much 
as these. 



138 FAR^nNG. 

That uncoiTupted behavior which we admire in 
animals and in young children belongs to him, to 
the hunter, the sailor, — the man who lives in 
the presence of Nature. Cities force growth, and 
make men talkative and entertaining, but they 
make them artificial. What possesses interest for 
us is the naturel of each, his constitutional excel- 
lence. This is forever a surprise, engaging and 
lovely; we cannot be satiated with knowing it, 
and about it; and it is this which the conversa- 
tion with Nature cherishes and guards. 



WORKS AND DATS, 



WORKS AND DAYS. 

Our nineteenth century is the age of tools. 
They grow out of our structure. " Man is the 
metre of all things," said Aristotle ; '' the hand is 
the instrument of instruments, and the mind is the 
form of forms." The human body is the magazine 
of inventions, the patent-office, where are the 
models from which every hint was taken. All the 
tools and engines on earth are only extensions of its 
limbs and senses. One definition of man is " an in- 
telligence served by organs." Machines can only 
second, not supply, his unaided senses. The body 
is a metre. The eye appreciates finer differences 
than art can expose. The apprentice clings to his 
foot-rule , a practised mechanic will measure by his 
thumb and his arm with equal precision ; and a good 
surveyor will pace sixteen rods more accurately than 
another man can measure them by tape. The sym- 
pathy of eye and hand by which an Indian or a 
practised slinger hits his mark with a stone, or a 
wood-chopper or a carpenter swings his axe to a 
hair-line on his log, are examples ; and there is no 
sense or organ which is not capable of exquisite per- 
formance. 



142 WORKS AND DAYS. 

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of our 
science ; and such is the mechanical determination 
of our age, and so recent are our best contrivances, 
that use has not dulled our joy and pride in them ; 
and we pity our fathers for dying before steam and 
galvanism, sulphuric ether and ocean telegraphs, 
photograph and spectroscope arrived, as cheated out 
of half their human estate. These arts open great 
gates of a future, promising to make the world 
plastic and to lift human life out of its beggary to 
a godlike ease and power. 

Our century, to be sure, had inherited a tolerable 
apparatus. We had the compass, the printing-press, 
watches, the spiral spring, the barometer, the tele- 
scope. Yet so many inventions have been added, that 
life seems almost made over new ; and as Leibnitz 
said of Newton, " that if he reckoned all that had 
been done by mathematicians from the beginning of 
the world down to Newton, and what had been done 
by him, his would be the better half," so one might 
say that the inventions of the last fifty years counter- 
poise those of the fifty centuries before them. For 
the vast production and manifold application of iron 
is new ; and our common and indispensable utensils 
of house and farm are new; the sewing-machine, 
the power-loom, the McCormick reaper, the mow- 
ing-machines, gas-light, lucifer matches, and the im- 
mense productions of the laboratory, are new in this 
century, and one franc's worth of coal does the 
work of a laborer for twenty days. 



WORKS AND DAYS. 143 

Why need I speak of steam, the enemy of space 
and time, with its enormous strength and deHcate 
appHcabihty, which is made in hospitals to bring a 
bowl of gruel to a sick man's bed, and can twist 
beams of iron like candy-braids, and vies with the 
forces which upheaved and doubled over the geo- 
logic strata ? Steam is an apt scholar and a strong- 
shouldered fellow, but it has not yet done all its 
work. It already walks about the field like a man, 
and will do anything required of it. It irrigates 
crops, and drags away a mountain. It must sew 
our shirts, it must drive our gigs ; taught by Mr. 
Babbage, it must calculate interest and logarithms. 
Lord Chancellor Thurlow thouo;ht it mi^ht be made 
to draw bills and answers in chancery. If that 
were satire, it is yet coming to render many higher 
services of a mechanico-intellectual kind, and will 
leave the satire short of the fact. 

How excellent are the mechanical aids we have 
applied to the human body, as in dentistry, in vac- 
cination, in the rhinoplastic treatment ; in the beau- 
tiful aid of ether, like a finer sleep ; and in the 
boldest promiser of all, — the transfusion of the 
blood, — which, in Paris, it was claimed, enables 
a man to change his blood as often as his linen ! 

What of this dapper caoutchouc and gutta-percha, 
w^hich make water-pipes and stomach-pumps, belt- 
ing for mill-wheels, and diving bells, and rain-proof 
coats for all climates, which teach us to defy the 



144 WORKS AND DAYS. 

wet, and put every man on a footing with the bea- 
ver and the crocodile ? What of the grand tools 
with which we engineer, like kobolds and enchant- 
ers, — tunnelling Alps, canalling the American Isth- 
mus, piercing the Arabian desert ? In Massachusetts, 
we fight the sea successfully with beach-grass and 
broom, — and the blowing sand-barrens with pine 
plantations. The soil of Holland, once the most 
populous in Europe, is below the level of the sea. 
Egypt, where no rain fell for three thousand years, 
now, it is said, thanks Mehemet All's irrigations 
and planted forests for late-returning showers. 
The old Hebrew king said, " He makes the wrath 
of man to praise him." And there is no argu- 
ment of theism better than the grandeur of ends 
brought about by paltry means. The chain of 
western railroads from Chicago to the Pacific has 
planted cities and civilization in less time than it 
costs to bring an orchard into bearing. 

What shall we say of the ocean telegraph, that 
extension of the eye and ear, whose sudden per- 
formance astonished mankind as if the intellect 
were taking the brute earth itself into training, 
and shooting the first thrills of life and thought 
through the unwilling brain ? 

There does not seem any limit to these new infor- 
mations of the same Spirit that made the elements 
at first, and now, through man, works them. Art 
and power will go on as they have done, — will 



WORKS AND DAYS. 145 

make day out of night, time out of space, and space . 
out of time. 

Invention breeds invention. No sooner is the 
electric telegraph devised, than gutta-percha, the 
very material it requires, is found. The aeronaut 
is provided with gun-cotton, the very fuel he wants 
for his balloon. When commerce is vastly enlarged, 
California and Australia expose the gold it needs. 
When Europe is over-populated, America and Aus- 
tralia crave to be peopled ; and so, throughout, ev- 
ery chance is timed, as if Nature, who made the 
lock, knew where to find the key. . 

Another result of our arts is the new intercourse 
which is surprising us with new solutions of the 
embarrassing political problems. The intercourse 
is not new, but the scale is new. Our selfishness 
would have held slaves, or would have excluded 
from a quarter of the planet all that are not born on 
the soil of that quarter. Our politics are disgusting ; 
but what can they help or hinder when from time 
to time the primal instincts are impressed on masses 
of mankind, when the nations are in exodus and 
flux ? Nature loves to cross her stocks, — and Ger- 
man, Chinese, Turk, Russ, and Kanaka were put- 
ting out to sea, and intermarrying race with race ; 
and commerce took the hint, and ships were built 
capacious enough to carry the people of a county. 

This thousand-handed art has introduced a new 
element into the state. The science of power is 



146 WORKS AND DAYS. 

forced to remember the power of science. Civiliza- 
tion mounts and climbs. Malthus, when he stated 
that the mouths went on multiplying geometrically, 
and the food only arithmetically, forgot to say that 
the human mind was also a factor in political econ- 
omy, and that the augmenting wants of society 
would be met by an augmenting power of inven- 
tion. 

Yes, we have a pretty artillery of tools now in 
our social arrangements : we ride four times as fast 
as our fathers did ; travel, grind, weave, forge, 
plant, till, and excavate better. We have new 
shoes, gloves, glasses, and gimlets ; we have the cal- 
culus ; we have the newspaper, which does its best 
to make every square acre of land and sea give 
an account of itself at your breakfast-table ; we 
have money, and paper money ; we have language, 
— the finest tool of all, and nearest to the mind. 
Much will have more. Man flatters himself that 
his command over nature must increase. Things 
begin to obey him. We are to have the balloon 
yet, and the next war will be fought in the air. 
We may yet find a rose-water that will wash the 
negro white. He sees the skull of the English race 
changing from its Saxon type under the exigencies 
of American life. 

Tantalus, who in old times was seen vainly 
trying to quench his thirst with a flowing stream, 
which ebbed whenever he approached it, has been 



WORKS AND DAYS. 147 

seen again lately. He is in Paris, in New York, in 
Boston. He is now in great spirits ; thinks he 
shall reach it yet ; thinks he shall bottle the wave. 
It is, however, getting a little doubtfnl. Things 
have an ugly look still. No matter how many cen- 
turies of culture have preceded, the new man always 
finds himself standing on the brink of chaos, always 
in a crisis. Can anybody remember when the times 
were not hard, and money not scarce ? Can any- 
body rem.ember when sensible men, and the right 
sort of men, and the right sort of women, were plen- 
tiful ? Tantalus begins to think steam a delusion, 
and galvanism no better than it should be. 

Many facts concur to show that we must look 
deeper for our salvation than to steam, photographs, 
balloons, or astronomy. These tools have some 
questionable properties. They are reagents. Ma- 
chinery is aggressive. The weaver becomes a web, 
the machinist a machine. If you do not use the 
tools, they use you. All tools are in one sense 
edge-tools, and dangerous. A man builds a fine 
house ; and now he has a master, and a task for life : 
he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in re- 
pair, the rest of his days. A man has a reputation, 
and is no longer free, but must respect that. A 
man makes a picture or a book, and, if it succeeds, 
't is often the worse for him. I saw a brave man 
the other day, hitherto as free as the hawk or the 
fox of the wilderness, constructing his cabinet of 



148 WORKS AND DAYS. 

drawers for shells, eggs, minerals, and mounted 
birds. It was easy to see that he was amusing him- 
self with making pretty links for his own limbs. 

Then the political economist thinks " 'tis doubt- 
ful if all the mechanical inventions that ever existed 
have lightened the day's toil of one human being." 
The machine unmakes the man. Now that the 
machine is so perfect, the engineer is nobody. 
Every new step in improving the engine restricts 
one more act of the engineer, — unteaches him. 
Once it took Archimedes ; now it only needs a 
fireman, and a boy to know the coppers, to pull up 
the handles or mind the water-tank. But when 
the engine breaks, they can do nothing. 

What sickening details in the daily journals ! I 
believe they have ceased to publish the " Newgate 
Calendar " and the " Pirate's Own Book " since the 
family newspapers, namely, the New York Tribune 
and the London Times, have quite superseded them 
in the freshness, as well as the horror, of their 
records of crime. Politics were never more cor- 
rupt and brutal ; and Trade, that pride and darling 
of our ocean, that educator of nations, that bene- 
factor in spite of itself, ends in shamefLd defaulting, 
bubble, and bankruptcy, all over the world. 

Of course, we resort to the enumeration of his 
arts and inventions as a measure of the worth of 
man. But if, with all his arts, he is a felon, we 
cannot assume the mechanical skill or chemical re- 



WORKS AND DAYS 149 

sources as the measure of worth. Let us try another 
gauge. 

What have these arts done for the character, for 
the worth of mankind ? Are men better ? 'T is 
sometimes questioned whether morals have not de- 
cHned as the arts have ascended. Here are great 
arts and httle men. Here is greatness begotten of 
paltriness. We cannot trace the triumphs of civili- 
zation to such benefactors as we wish. The great- 
est meliorator of the world is selfish, huckstering 
Trade. Every victory over matter ought to recom- 
mend to man the worth of his nature. But now 
one wonders who did all this good. Look up the 
inventors. Each has his own knack ; his genius is 
in veins and spots. But the great, equal, sym- 
metrical brain, fed from a great heart, you shall not 
find. Every one has more to hide than he has to 
show, or is lamed by his excellence. 'T is too 
plain that with the material power the moral pro- 
gress has not kept pace. It appears that we have 
not made a judicious investment. Works and 
days were offered us, and we took works. 

The new study of the Sanskrit has shown us the 
origin of the old names of God, — Dyaus, Deus, 
Zeus, Zeu pater, Jupiter, — names of the sun, still 
'recognizable through the modifications of our ver- 
nacular words, importing that the Day is the Di- 
vine Power and Manifestation, and indicating that 
those ancient men, in their attempts to express 



150 WORKS AND DAYS. 

the Supreme Power of the universe, called him 
the Day, and that this name was accepted by all 
the tribes. 

Hesiod wrote a poem which he called " Works 
and Days," in which he marked the changes of the 
Greek year, instructing the husbandman at the ris- 
ing of what constellation he might safely sow, when 
to reap, when to gather wood, when the sailor 
might launch his boat in security from storms, and 
what admonitions of the planets he must heed. It 
is full of economies for Grecian life, notinor the 
proper age for marriage, the rules of household 
thrift, and of hospitality. The poem is full of piety 
as well as prudence, and is adapted to all merid- 
ians, by adding the ethics of works and of days. 
But he has not pushed his study of days into such 
inquiry and analysis as they invite. 

A farmer said " he should like to have all the 
land that joined his own." Bonaparte, who had the 
same appetite, endeavored to make the Mediter- 
ranean a French lake. Czar Alexander was more 
expansive, and wished to call the Pacific my ocean; 
and the Americans were obliged to resist his at- 
tempts to make it a close sea. But if he had the 
earth for his pasture, and the sea for his pond, he 
would be a pauper still. He only is rich who owns 
the day. There is no king, rich man, fairy, or 
demon who possesses such power as that. The 
days are ever divine as to the first Aryans. They 



WORKS AND DAYS. 151 

are of the least pretension, and of the greatest 
capacity, of anything that exists. They come and 
go like muffled and veiled figures, sent from a dis- 
tant friendly party ; but they say nothing ; and if we 
do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as 
silently away. 

How the day fits itself to the mind, winds itself 
round it like a fine drapery, clothing all its fancies ! 
Any holiday communicates to us its color. We 
wear its cockade and favors in our humor. Re- 
member what boys think in the morning of " Elec- 
tion day," of the Fourth of July, of Thanksgiving 
or Christmas. The very stars in their courses wink 
to them of nuts and cakes, bonbons, presents, and 
fireworks. Cannot memory still descry the old 
school-house and its porch, somewhat hacked by 
jack-knives, where you spun tops and snapped mar- 
bles ; and do you not recall that life was then calen- 
dared by moments, threw itself into nervous knots 
or glittering hours, even as now, and not spread 
itself abroad an equable felicity ? In college terms, 
and in years that followed, the young graduate, 
when the Commencement anniversary returned, 
though he were in a swamp, would see a festive 
light, and find the air faintly echoing with plausive 
academic thunders. In sohtude and in the coun- 
try, what dignity distinguishes the holy time ! The 
old Sabbath, or Seventh Day, white with the relig- 
ions of unknown thousands of years, when this hal- 



152 WORKS AND DAYS. 

lowed hour dawns out of the deep, — a clean page, 
which the wise may inscribe with truth, whilst the 
savage scrawls it with fetishes, — the cathedral mu- 
sic of history breathes through it a psalm to our 
solitude. 

So, in the common experience of the scholar, the 
weathers fit his moods. A thousand tunes the vari- 
able wind plays, a thousand spectacles it brings, and 
each is the frame or dwelling of a new spirit. I 
used formerly to choose my time with some nicety 
for each favorite book. One author is good for 
winter, and one for the dog-days. The scholar must 
look long for the right hour for Plato's Timaeus. 
At last the elect morning arrives, the early dawn, 
— a few lights conspicuous in the heaven, as of a 
world just created and still becoming, — and in its 
wide leisures we dare open that book. 

There are days when the great are near us, when 
there is no frown on their brow, no condescension 
even ; when they take us by the hand, and we 
share their thought. There are days which are 
the carnival of the year. The angels assume flesh, 
and repeatedly become visible. The imagination of 
the gods is excited, and rushes on every side into 
forms. Yesterday not a bird peeped; the world 
was barren, peaked, and pining : to-day 't is incout 
ceivably populous ; creation swarms and meliorates. 

The days are made on a loom whereof the warp 
and woof are past and future time. Thej are 



WORKS AND DAYS. 153 

majestically dressed, as if every god brought a thread 
to the skyey web. 'T is pitiful the things by which 
we are rich or poor, — a matter of coins, coats, and 
carpets, a little more or less stone, or wood, or 
paint, the fashion of a cloak or hat ; like the luck of 
naked Indians, of whom one is proud in the posses- 
sion of a glass bead or a red feather, and the rest 
miserable in the want of it. But the treasures 
which Nature spent itself to amass, — the secular, 
refined, composite anatomy of man, — which all strata 
go to form, which the prior races, from infusory and 
saurian, existed to ripen ; the surrounding plastic 
natures ; the earth with its foods ; the intellectual, 
temperamenting air ; the sea with its invitations ; 
the heaven deep with worlds ; and the answering 
brain and nervous structure replying to these ; the 
eye that looketh into the deeps, which again look 
back to the eye, — abyss to abyss ; — these, not like 
a glass bead, or the coins or carpets, are given im- 
measurably to all. 

This miracle is hurled into every beggar's hapds. 
The blue sky is a covering for a market, and for the 
cherubim and seraphim. The sky is the varnish or 
glory with which the Artist has washed the whole 
work, — the verge or confines of matter and spirit. 
Nature could no farther go. Could our happiest 
dream come to pass in solid fact, — could a power 
open our eyes to behold " millions of spiritual crea- 
tures walk the earth," — I believe I should find that 



154 WORKS AND DAYS. 

mid-plain on which they moved floored beneath and 
arched above with the same web of bhie depth which 
weaves itself over me now, as I trudge the streets 
on my affairs. 

'T is singular that our rich English language 
should have no word to denote the face of the 
world. Kinde was the old English term, which, 
however, filled only half the range of our fine Latin 
word, with its delicate future tense, — natura^ about 
to be born, or what German philosophy denotes as a 
beco7ning. But nothing expresses that power which 
seems to work for beauty alone. The Greek Kos- 
77108 did ; and therefore, with great propriety, Hum- 
boldt entitles his book, which recounts the last re- 
sults of science. Cosmos. 

Such are the days, — the earth is the cup, the sky 
is the cover, of the immense bounty of nature which 
is offered us for our daily aliment ; but what a force 
of illusion begins life with us, and attends us to the 
end ! We are coaxed, flattered, and duped, from 
morn to eve, from birth to death ; and wh^re is the 
old eye that ever saw through the deception ? The 
Hindoos represent Maia, the illusory energy of 
Vishnu, as one of his principal attributes. As if, in 
this gale of warring elements, which life is, it was 
necessary to bind souls to human life as mariners 
in a tempest lash themselves to the mast and bul- 
warks of a ship, and Nature employed certain illu- 
sions as her ties and straps, — a rattle, a doll, an 



WORKS AND DAYS. » 155 

apple, for a child ; skates, a river, a boat, a horse, 
a gun, for the growing boy ; — and I will not begin 
to name those of the youth and adult, for they are 
numberless. Seldom and slowly the mask falls, 
and the pupil is permitted to see that all is one stuff, 
cooked and painted under many counterfeit appear- 
ances. Hume's doctrine was that the circumstan- 
ces vary, the amount of happiness does not ; that 
the beffSiar crackino; fleas in the sunshine under a 
hedge, and the duke rolling by in his chariot, the 
girl equipped for her first ball,- and the orator re- 
turning triumphant from the debate, had different 
means, but the same quantity of pleasant excite- 
ment. 

This element of illusion lends all its force to hide 
the values of present time. Who is he that does 
not always find himself doing something less than 
his best task? "What are you doing?" ^' 0, 
nothing ; I have been doing thus, or I shall do so 
or so, but now I am only — " Ah! poor dupe, 
will you never slip out of the web of the master jug- 
gler, — never learn that, as soon as the irrecoverable 
years have woven their blue glory between to-day 
and us, these passing hours shall glitter and draw 
us, as the wildest romance and the homes of beauty 
and poetry ? How difficult to deal erect with them ! 
The events they bring, their trade, entertainments, 
and gossip, their urgent work, all throw dust in the 
eyes and distract attention. He is a strong man 



156 WORKS AND DAYS. 

who can look them in the eye, see through this jug- 
gle, feel their identity, and keep his own ; who 
can know surely that one will be like another to 
the end of the world, nor permit love, or death, or 
politics, or money, war, or pleasure, to draw him 
from his task. 

Tlie world is always equal to itself, and every 
man in moments of deeper thought is apprised that 
he is repeathig the experiences of the people in 
the streets of Thebes or Byzantium. An everlast- 
ing Now reigns in nature, which hangs the same 
roses on our bushes which charmed the Roman 
and the Chaldcean in their hanging gardens. ' To 
what end, then,' he asks, 'should I study lan- 
guages, and traverse countries, to learn so simple 
truths ? ' 

History of ancient art, excavated cities, recovery 
of books and inscriptions, — yes, the works were 
beautiful, and the history worth knowing; and 
academies convene to settle the claims of the old 
schools. What journeys and measurements, — 
Niebuhr and Mliller and Layard, — to identify the 
plain of Troy and Nimroud town ! And your 
homage to Dante costs you so much sailing ; and to 
ascertain the discoverers of America needs as much 
voyaging as the discovery cost. Poor child ! that 
flexile clay of which these old brothers moulded 
their admirable S3^mbols was not Persian, nor 
Memphian, nor Teutonic, nor local at all, but was 



WORKS AND DAYS. 157 

common lime and silex and water, and sunlight, the 
heat of the blood, and the heaving of the lungs ; it 
was that clay which thou heldest but now in thy 
foolish hands, and threwest away to go and seek in 
vain in sepulchres, mummy-pits, and old book-shops 
of Asia Minor, Egypt, and England. It was the 
deep to-day which all men scorn ; the rich poverty, 
which men hate ; the populous, all-loving solitude, 
which men quit for the tattle of towns. He lurks, 
he hides, — he who is success, reality, joy, and power. 
One of the illusions is that the present hour is not 
the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart 
that every day is the best day in the year. No man 
has learned anything rightly, until he knows that 
every day is EJoomsday. 'T is the old secret of the 
gods that they come in low disguises. 'Tis the 
vulgar great who come dizened with gold and jew- 
els. Real kings hide away their crowns in their 
wardrobes, and affect a plain and poor exterior. In 
the Norse legend of our ancestors, Odin dwells in 
a fisher's hut, and patches a boat. In the Hindoo 
legends, Hari dwells a peasant among peasants. 
In the Greek legend, Apollo lodges with the sliep- 
herds of Admetus ; and Jove liked to rusticate 
among the poor Ethiopians. So, in our history, 
Jesus is born in a barn, and his twelve peers are 
fishermen. 'T is the very principle of science that 
Nature shows herself best in leasts ; 't was the 
maxim of Aristotle and Lucretius ; and, in modern 



158 WORKS AND DAYS. 

times, of Swedenborg and of Hahnemann. The or- 
der of changes in the egg determines the age of fos- 
sil strata. So it was the rule of our poets, in the 
legends of fairy lore, that the fairies largest in 
power were the least in size. In the Christian 
graces, humility stands highest of all, in the form of 
the Madonna ; and in life, this is the secret of the 
wise. We owe to genius always the same debt, of 
lifting the curtain from the common, and showing 
us that divinities are sittins; disguised in the seem- 
ing gang of gypsies and pedlers. In daily life, 
what distinoruishes the master is the usins: those 
materials he has, instead of looking about for what 
are more renowned, or what others have used well. 
" A general," said Bonaparte, " always has troops 
enough, if he only knows how to employ those 
he has, and bivouacs with them." Do not refuse 
the employment which the hour brings you, for 
one more ambitious. The highest heaven of wis- 
dom is alike near from every point, and thou must 
find it, if at all, by methods native to thyself alone. 

That work is ever the more pleasant to the imagi- 
nation which is not now required. How wistfully, 
when we have promised to attend the working 
committee, we look at the distant hills and their 
seductions ! 

The use of history is to give value to the present 
hour and its duty. That is good which commends 
to me my country, my climate, my means and ma- 



WORKS AND DAYS. 159 

terials, my associates. I knew a man in a certain 
religious exaltation, who '' thought it an honor to 
wash his own face." He seemed to me more sane 
than those who hold themselves cheap. 

Zoologists may deny that horse -hairs in the wa- 
ter change to worms ; but I find that whatever is 
old corrupts, and the past turns to snakes. The 
reverence for the deeds of our ancestors is a treach- 
erous sentiment. Their merit was not to reverence 
the old, but to honor the present moment ; and we 
falsely make them excuses of the very habit which 
they hated and defied. 

Another illusion is, that there is not time enough 
for our work. Yet we might reflect that though 
many creatures eat from one dish, each, according 
to its constitution, assimilates from the elements 
what belongs to it, whether time, or space, or light, 
or water, or food. A snake converts whatever prey 
the meadow yields him into snake ; a fox, into fox ; 
and Peter and John are working up all existence 
into Peter and John. A poor Indian chief of the 
Six Nations of New York made a wiser reply than 
any philosopher, to some one complaining that he 
had not enough time. '' Well," said Red Jacket, 
" I suppose you have all there is." 

A third illusion haunts us, that a long duration, 
as a year, a decade, a century, is valuable. But an 
old French sentence says, " God works in mo- 
ments," — '/ En peu dlieure Dieu labeure.'^ We 



160 WORKS AND DAYS. 

ask for long life, but 't is deep life, or grand mo' 
ments, that signify. Let the measure of time be 
spiritual, not mechanical. Life is unnecessarily 
long. INIoments of insight, of fine personal relation, 
a smile, a glance, — what ample borrowers of eter- 
nity they are ! Life culminates and concentrates ; 
and Homer said, " The gods ever give to mor- 
tals their apportioned share of reason only on one 
day." 

I am of the opinion of the poet Wordsworth, 
"that there is no real happiness in this life, but in 
intellect and virtue."' I am of the opinion of PHn}', 
" that, whilst we are musino' on these thinos, we 
are addino; to the leno;th of our lives." I am of the 
opinion of Glauco, who said, " The measure of life, 
O Socrates, is, with the wise, the speaking and 
hearing such discourses as yours." 

He only can enrich me who can recommend to 
me the space between sun and sun. 'Tis the 
measure of a man, — his apprehension of a day. 
For we do not listen with the best regard to the 
verses of a man who is only a poet, nor to his prob- 
lems, if he is only an algebraist ; but if a man is 
at once acquainted with the geometric foundations 
of things and with their festal splendor, his poetry 
is exact and his arithmetic musical. And him I 
reckon the most learned scholar, not who can un- 
earth for me the buried dynasties of Sesostris and 
Ptolemy, the Sothiac era, the Olympiads and con- 



WORKS AND DAYS. 161 

sulships, but who can unfold the theory of this par- 
ticular Wednesday. Can he uncover the ligaments 
concealed from all but piety, which attach the dull 
men and things we know to the First Cause? 
These passing fifteen minutes, men think, are time, 
not eternity; are low and subaltern, are but hope 
or memory, that is, the way to or the way from 
welfare, but not welfare. Can he show their tie ? 
That interpreter shall guide us from a menial and 
eleemosynary existence into riches and stabihty. 
He dignifies the place where he is. This mendi- 
cant America, this curious, peering, itinerant, imi- 
tative America, studious of Greece and Rome, of 
England and Germany, will take off its dusty 
shoes, will take off its glazed traveller's-cap, and 
sit at home with repose and deep joy on its face. 
The world has no such landscape, the aeons of 
history no such hour, the future no equal second 
opportunity. Now let poets sing ! now let arts un- 
fold! 

One more view remains. But life is good only 
when it is magical and musical, a perfect timing and 
consent, and when we do not anatomize it. You 
must treat the days respectfully, you must be a day 
yourself, and not interrogate it like a college pro- 
fessor. The world is enigmatical, — everything 
said, and everything known or done, — and must 
not be taken literally, but genially. We must be 
at the top of our condition to understand anything 



162 WOEKS AND DAYS. 

rightly. You must hear the bird's song without 
attempting to render it into nouns and verbs. Can- 
not we be a little abstemious and obedient ? Can- 
not we let the morning be ? 

Everything in the universe goes by indirection. 
There are no straight lines. I remember well the 
foreign scholar who made a week of my youth hap- 
py by his visit. " The savages in the islands," he 
said, ''delight to play with the surf, coming in on 
the top of the rollers, then swimming out again, and 
repeat the delicious manoeuvre for hours. Well, 
human life is made up of such transits. There can 
be no greatness without abandonment. But here 
your very astronomy is an espionage. I dare not 
go out of doors and see the moon and stars, but 
they seem to measure my tasks, to ask how many 
lines or pages are finished since I saw them last. 
Not so, as I told you, was it in Belleisle. The days 
at Belleisle were all different, and only joined by a 
perfect love of the same object. Just to fill the 
hour, — that is happiness. Fill my hour, ye gods, 
so that I shall not say, whilst I have done this, 
' Behold, also, an hour of my life is gone,' — but 
rather, ' I have lived an hour.' " 

We do not want factitious men, who can do any 
literary or professional feat, as, to write poems, or 
advocate a cause, or carry a measure, for money ; 
or turn their ability indifferently in any particular 
direction by the strong effort of will. No, what 



WORKS AND DAYS. 163 

has been best done in the world, — the works of 
genius, — cost nothing. There is no painful effort, 
but it is the spontaneous flowing of the thought. 
Shakespeare made his Hamlet as a bird weaves its 
nest. Poems have been written between sleeping 
and waking, irresponsibly. Fancy defines herself: 

" Forms that men spy 
With the half-shut eye 
In the beams of the setting sun, am I." 

The masters painted for joy, and knew not that 
virtue had gone out of them. They could not paint 
the like in cold blood. The masters of Eno-lish 
lyric wrote their songs so. It was a fine efflores- 
cence of fine powers ; as was said of the letters 
of the Frenchwomen, — " the charming accident of 
their more charming existence." Then the poet 
is never the poorer for his song. A song is no 
song unless the circumstance is free and fine. If 
the singer sing from a sense of duty or from seeing 
no way of escape, I had rather have none. Those 
only can sleep who do not care to sleep ; and those 
only write or speak best who do not too much re- 
spect the writing or the speaking. 

The same rule holds in science. The savant is 
often an amateur. His performance is a memoir 
to the Academy on fish-worms, tadpoles, or spiders' 
legs ; he observes as other academicians observe ; 
he is on stilts at a microscope, and, — his memoir 
finished and read and printed, — he retreats into 



164 WORKS AND DAYS. 

his roiitinary existence, whicli is quite separate 
from his scientific. But in Newton, science was 
as easy as breathing ; he used the same wit to weigh 
the moon that he used to buckle his shoes ; and all 
his life was simple, wise, and majestic. So was it 
in Archimedes, — always self-same, like the sky. 
In Linnasus, in Franklin, the like sweetness and 
equality, — no stilts, no tiptoe ; — and their results 
are wholesome and memorable to all men. 

In stripping time of its illusions, in seeking to 
find what is the heart of the day, we come to the 
quality of the moment, and drop the duration alto- 
gether. It is the depth at which we live, and not 
at all the surface extension, that imports. We 
pierce to the eternity, of which time is the flitting 
surface ; and, really, the least acceleration of 
thought, and the least increase of power of thought, 
make life to seem and to be of vast duration. We 
call it time ; but when that acceleration and that 
deepening take effect, it acquires another and a 
higher name. 

There are people who do not need much experi- 
menting ; who, after years of activity, say, we 
knew all this before ; who love at first sight and 
hate at first sight ; discern the affinities and repul- 
sions ; who do not care so much for conditions as 
others, for they are always in one condition, and 
enjoy themselves ; who dictate to others, and are 
not dictated to ; who in their consciousness of de- 



WOEKS AND DAYS. 165 

serving success constantly slight the ordinary means 
of attaining it ; who have self-existence and self- 
help ; who are suffered to be themselves in society ; 
who are great in the present ; who have no talents, 
or care not to have them, — being that which was 
before talent, and shall be after it, and of which 
talent seems only a tool ; — this is character, the 
highest name at which philosophy has arrived. 

'T is not important how the hero does this or this, 
but what he is. What he is will appear in every 
gesture and syllable. In this way the moment and 
the character are one. 

'T is a fine fable for the advantage of character 
over talent, the Greek legend of the strife of Jove 
and Phoebus. Phoebus challenged the gods, and 
said, " Who will outshoot the far-darting Apollo ? " 
Zeus said, " I will." Mars shook the lots in his 
helmet, and that of Apollo leaped out first. Apollo 
stretched his bow and shot his arrow into the ex- 
treme west. Then Zeus arose, and with one stride 
cleared the whole distance, and said, " Where shall 
I shoot ? there is no space left." So the bowman's 
prize was adjudged to him who drew no bow. 

And this is the progress of every earnest mind ; 
from the works of man and the activity of the hands 
to a delight in the faculties which rule them ; from 
a respect to the works to a wise wonder at this 
mystic element of time in which he is conditioned ; 
from local skills and the economy which reckons 



166 WORKS AND DAYS. 

the amount of production jper hour to the finer 
economy which respects the quahty of wliat is 
done, and the right we liave to the work, or the 
fidehty with which it flows from ourselves ; then 
to the depth of thought it betrays, looking to its 
universality, or, that its roots are in eternity, not in 
time. Then it flows from character, that sublime 
health which values one moment as another, and 
makes us great in all conditions, and is the only 
definition we have of freedom and power. 



BOOKS. 



BOOKS. 



It is easy to accuse books, and bad ones are easily 
found ; and the best are but records, and not the 
things recorded ; and certainly there is dilettante- 
ism enough, and books that are merely neutral and 
do nothing for us. In Plato's " Gorgias," Socrates 
says : " The shipmaster walks in a modest garb near 
the sea, after bringing his passengers from ^gina 
or from Pontus, not thinking he has done anything 
extraordinary, and certainly knowing that his pas- 
sengers are the same, and in no respect better than 
when he took them on board." So is it with books, 
for the most part : they work no redemption in us. 
The bookseller might certainly know that his cus- 
tomers are in no respect better for the purchase 
and consumption of his wares. The volume is 
dear at a dollar, and, after reading to weariness the 
lettered backs, we leave the shop with a sigh, and 
learn, as I did, without surprise, of a surly bank 
director, that in bank parlors they estimate all stocks 
of this kind as rubbish. 

But it is not less true that there are books which 
are of that importance in a man's private experi- 



170 BOOKS. 

ence, as to verify for him the fables of Cornelius 
Agrippa, of Michael Scott, or of the old Orpheus of 
Thrace, — books which take rank in our life with 
parents and lovers and passionate experiences, so 
medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so author- 
itative, — books which are the work and the proof of 
faculties so comprehensive, so nearly equal to the 
world which they paint, that, though one shuts them 
with meaner ones, he feels his exclusion from them 
to accuse his w^ay of living. 

Consider what you have in the smallest chosen 
library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men 
that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a 
thousand years, have set in best order the results of 
their learning and wisdom. The men themselves 
were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of in- 
terruption, fenced by etiquette ; but the thought 
wdiich they did not uncover to their bosom friend 
is here written out in transparent words to us, the 
strangers of another age. 

We owe to books those general benefits which 
come from high intellectual action. Thus, I think, 
we often owe to them the perception of immortal- 
ity. They impart sympathetic activity to the moral 
power. Go with mean people, and you think life is 
mean. Then read Plutarch, and the world is a proud 
place, peopled with men of positive quality, with 
heroes and demigods standing around us, who will 
not let us sleep. Then, they address the imagina- 



BOOKS. 171 

tion : only poetry inspires poetry. They become 
the organic culture of the time. College education 
is the readinor of certain books which the common 
sense of all scholars agrees will represent the sci- 
ence already accumulated. If you know that, — 
for instance in geometry, if you have read Euclid 
and Laplace, — your opinion has some value ; if you 
do not know these, you are not entitled to give any 
opinion on the subject. Whenever any sceptic or 
bigot claims to be heard on the questions of intel- 
lect and morals, we ask if he is familiar with the 
books of Plato, where all his pert objections have 
once for all been disposed of. If not, he has no 
right to our time. Let him go and find himself an- 
swered there. 

Meantime the colleges, whilst they provide us 
with libraries, furnish no professor of books ; and, I 
think, no chair is so much wanted. In a library we 
are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends, 
but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these 
paper and leathern boxes ; and though they know 
us, and have been waiting two, ten, or twenty centu- 
ries for us, — some of them, — and are eager to 
give us a sign, and unbosom themselves, it is the law 
of their limbo that they must not speak until spoken 
to ; and as the enchanter has dressed them, like 
battalions of infantry, in coat and jacket of one cut, 
by the thousand and ten thousand, your chance of 
hitting on the right one is to be computed by the 



172 BOOKS. 

arithmetical rule of Permutation and Combina- 
tion, — not a choice out of three caskets, but out of 
half a million caskets all alike. But it happens in 
our experience, that in this lottery there are at least 
fifty or a hundred blanks to a prize. It seems, then, 
as if some charitable soul, after losing a great deal 
of time among the false books, and alighting upon 
a few true ones which made him happy and wise, 
would do a riciht act in namincr those whicli have 
been bridges or ships to carry him safely over dark 
morasses and barren oceans, into the heart of sacred 
cities, into palaces and temples. This would be 
best done by those great masters of books who from 
time to time appear, — the Fabricii, the Seldens, 
Magliabecchis, Scaligers, Mirandolas, Bayles, John- 
sons, whose eyes sweep the whole horizon of learn- 
ing. But private readers, reading purely for love 
of the book, would serve us by leaving each the 
shortest note of what he found. 

There are books ; and it is practicable to read 
them, because they are so few. We look over with 
a sigh the monumental libraries of Paris, of the Vati- 
can, and the British Museum. In 1858, the num- 
ber of printed books in the Imperial Library at Paris 
was estimated at eight hundred thousand volumes, 
with an annual increase of twelve thousand volumes ; 
so that the number of printed books extant to-day 
may easily exceed a milHon. It is easy to count 
the number of pages which a diligent man can read 



BOOKS. 173 

in a day, and the number of years which human 
life in favorable circumstances allows to reading ; 
and to demonstrate, that, though he should read 
from dawn till dark, for sixty years, he must die in 
the first alcoves. But nothing can be more decep- 
tive than this arithmetic, where none but a natural 
method is really pertinent. P visit occasionally the 
Cambridge Library, and I can seldom go there with- 
out renewing the conviction that the best of it all is 
already within the four walls of my study at home. 
The inspection of the catalogue brings me continu- 
ally back to the few standard writers who are on 
every private shelf; and to these it can afford only 
the most slight and casual additions. The crowds 
and centuries of books are only commentary and 
elucidation, echoes and weakeners of these few 
great voices of Time. 

The best rule of reading will be a method from 
nature, and not a mechanical one of hours and 
pages. It holds each student to a pursuit of his 
native aim, instead of a desultory miscellany. Let 
him read what is proper to him, and not waste his 
memory on a crowd of mediocrities. As whole 
nations have derived their culture from a single 
book, — as the Bible has been the literature as well 
as the religion of large portions of Europe, — as 
Hafiz was the eminent genius of the Persians, Con- 
fucius of the Chinese, Cervantes of the Spaniards ; 
so, perhaps^ the human mind would be a gainer, 



174 BOOKS. 

if all the secondary writers were lost, — say, in 
England, all but Shakspeare, Milton, and Bacon, 
— through the profounder study so drawn to those 
wonderful minds. With this pilot of his own ge- 
nius, let the student read one, or let him read many, 
he will read advantageously. Dr. Johnson said : 
" Whilst you stand deliberating which book your 
son shall read first, another boy has read both : read 
anything five hours a day, and you will soon be 
learned." 

Nature is much our friend in this matter. Nature 
is always clarifying her water and her wine. No 
filtration can be so perfect. She does the same 
thing by books as by her gases and plants. There 
is always a selection in writers, and then a selection 
from the selection. In the first place, all books that 
get fairly into the vital air of the world were writ- 
ten by the successful class, by the affirming and ad- 
vancing class, who utter what tens of thousands 
feel though they cannot say. There has already 
been a scrutiny and choice from many hundreds of 
young pens, before the pamphlet or political chapter 
which you read in a fugitive journal comes to your 
eye. All these are young adventurers, who pro- 
duce their performance to the wise ear of Time, 
who sits and weighs, and, ten years hence, out of a 
million of pages reprints one. Again it is judged, it 
is winnowed by all the winds of opinion, and what 
terrific selection has not passed on it before it can be 



BOOKS. 175 

reprinted after twenty years, — and reprinted after 
a century ! - — it is as if Minos and Rhadamanthus 
had indorsed the writing. 'T is therefore an econ- 
my of time to read old and famed books. Nothing 
can be preserved which is not good ; and I know 
beforehand that Pindar, Martial, Terence, Galen, 
Kepler, Galileo, Bacon, Erasmus, More, will be 
superior to the average intellect. In contempora- 
ries, it is not so easy to distinguish betwixt notoriety 
and fame. 

Be sure, then, to read no mean books. Shun the 
spawn of the press on the gossip of the hour. Do 
not read what you shall learn, without asking, in 
the street and the train. Dr. Johnson said, " he al- 
ways went into stately shops " ; and good travellers 
stop at the best hotels ; for, though they cost more, 
they do not cost much more, and there is the good 
company and the best information. In like manner, 
the scholar knows that the famed books contain, first 
and last, the best thoughts and facts. Now and 
then, by rarest luck, in some foolish Grub Street is 
the gem we want. But in the best circles is the 
best information. If you should transfer the amount 
of your reading day by day from the newspaper to 

the standard authors But who dare speak of 

such a thing ? 

The three practical rules, then, which I have to 
offer, are, — 1. Never read any book that is not a 
year old. 2. Never read any but famed books. 



176 BOOKS. 

3. Never read any but what you like ; or, In Shak- 
speare's phrase, 

" No profit goes where is no pleasure ta'en : 
In brief, sir, study what you most affect," 

Montaigne says, " Books are a languid pleasure" ; 
but I find certain books vital and spermatic, not 
leaving the reader what he was : he shuts the book 
a richer man. I would never willingly read any 
others than such. And I will venture, at the risk 
of inditing a list of old primers and grammars, to 
count the few books which a superficial reader must 
thankfully use. 

Of the old Greek books, I think there are five 
which we cannot spare : 1. Homer, who in spite of 
Pope and all the learned uproar of centuries, has 
really the true fire, and is good for simple minds, is 
the true and adequate germ of Greece, and occupies 
that place as history, which nothing can supply. 
It holds through all literature, that our best his- 
tory is still poetry. It is so in Hebrew, in San- 
skrit, and in Greek. English history is best known 
through Shakspeare ; how much through Merlin, 
Robin Hood, and the Scottish ballads! — the German, 
through the Nibelungenlied ; — the Spanish, through 
the Cid. Of Homer, George Chapman's is the he- 
roic translation, though the most literal prose ver- 
sion is the best of all. 2. Herodotus, whose his- 
tory contains inestimable anecdotes, which brought 
it with the learned into a sort of disesteem ; but in 



BOOKS. 177 

these days, when it is found that what is most mem< 
orable of history is a few anecdotes, and that we 
need not be alarmed though we should find it not 
dull, it is regaining credit. 3. ^schylus, the grand- 
est of the three tragedians, who has given us under 
a thin veil the first plantation of Europe. The 
" Prometheus " is a poem of the like dignity and 
scope as the Book of Job, or the Norse Edda» 
4. Of Plato I hesitate to speak, lest there should 
be no end. You find in him that which you have 
already found in Homer, now ripened to thought, 

— the poet converted to a philosopher, with loftier 
strains of musical wisdom than Homer reached ; as 
if Homer were the youth, and Plato the finished 
man ; yet with no less security of bold and perfect 
song, when he cares to use it, and with some harp- 
strings fetched from a higher heaven. He contains 
the future, as he came out of the past. In Plato, 
you explore modern Europe in its causes and seedj 

— all that in thought, which the history of Europe 
embodies or has yet to embody. The well-informed 
man finds himself anticipated. Plato is up with 
him too. Nothing has escaped him. Every new 
crop in the fertile harvest of reform, every fresh 
suggestion of modern humanity, is there. If the 
student wish to see both sides, and justice done 
to the man of the world, pitiless exposure of ped- 
ants, and the supremacy of truth and the relig- 
ious sentiment, he shall be contented also. Why 



178 BOOKS. 

should not young men be educated on this book ? 
It would suffice for the tuition of the race, — to 
test their understanding, and to express their rea- 
son. Here is that which is so attractive to all 
men, — the literature of aristocracy shall I call it ? 
— the picture of the best persons, sentiments, and 
manners, by the first master, in the best times, — 
portraits of Pericles, Alcibiades, Crito, Prodicus, 
Protagoras, Anaxagoras, and Socrates, with the 
lovely background of the Athenian and suburban 
landscape. Or who can overestimate the images 
with which Plato has enriched the minds of men, 
and which pass like bullion in the currency of all na- 
tions ? Read the " Phagdo," the '' Protagoras," the 
" Phsedrus," the " Timseus," the '' Republic," and 
the " Apology of Socrates." 5. Plutarch cannot 
be spared from the smallest library; first, because 
he is so readable, which is much ; then, that he is 
medicinal and invigorating. The lives of Cimon, 
Lycurgus, Alexander, Demosthenes, Phocion, Mar- 
cellus, and the rest, are what history has of best. 
But this book has taken care of itself, and the opinion 
of the world is expressed in the innumerable cheap 
editions, which make it as accessible as a newspaper. 
But Plutarch's " Morals " is less known, and sel- 
dom reprinted. Yet such a reader as I am writ- 
ing to can as ill spare it as the " Lives." He will 
read in it the essays '' On the Daemon of Socrates," 
" On Isis and Osiris," '' On Progress in Virtue," 



BOOKS. 179 

*' On Garrulity," ^' On Love," and thank anew the 
art of prmting, and the cheerful domain of ancient 
thinking. Plutarch charms by the facility of his 
associations ; so that it signifies little where you 
open his book, you find yourself at the Olympian 
tables. His memory is like the Isthmian Games, 
where all that was excellent in Greece was assem- 
bled, and you are stimulated and recruited by lyric 
verses, by philosophic sentiments, by the forms and 
behavior of heroes, by the worship of the gods, and 
by the passing of fillets, parsley and laurel wreaths, 
chariots, armor, sacred cups, and utensils of sacrifice. 
An inestimable trilogy of ancient social pictures are 
the three "Banquets" respectively of Plato, Xeno- 
phon, and Plutarch. Plutarch's has the least ap- 
proach to historical accuracy ; but the meeting of the 
Seven Wise Masters is a charming portraiture of 
ancient manners and discourse, and is as clear as the 
voice of a fife, and entertaining as a French novel. 
Xenophon's delineation of Athenian manners is an 
accessory to Plato, and supplies traits of Socrates ; 
whilst Plato's has merits of every kind, — being a 
repertory of the wisdom of the ancients on the 
subject of love, — a picture of a feast of wits, not 
less descriptive than Aristophanes, — and, lastly, 
containing that ironical eulogy of Socrates which is 
the source from which all tlie portraits of that phi- 
losopher current in Europe have been drawn. 
Of course a certain outline should be obtained of 



180 BOOKS. 

Greek history, in wliicli the important moments and 
persons can be rightly set down ; but the shortest 
is the best, and if one lacks stomach for Mr. Grote*s 
voluminous annals, the old slight and popular summa- 
ry of Goldsmith or of Gillies will serve. The valua- 
ble part is the age of Pericles and the next genera- 
tion. And here w^e must read the '-Clouds" of 
Aristophanes, and what more of that master we 
gain appetite for, to learn our way in the streets of 
Athens, and to know the tyranny of Aristophanes, 
requiring more genius and sometimes not less cruel- 
ty than belonged to the official commanders. Aris- 
tophanes is now very accessible, with much valua- 
ble commentary, through the labors of Mitchell and 
Cartwright. An excellent popular book is J. A. 
St. John's '' Ancient Greece " ; the '^ Life and Let- 
ters " of Niebuhr, even more than his Lectures, 
furnish leading views ; and Winckelmann, a Greek 
born out of due time, has become essential to an in- 
timate knowledge of the Attic genius. The secret 
of the recent histories in German and in English is 
the discovery, owed first to Wolff, and later to 
Boeckh, that the sincere Greek history of that pe- 
riod must be drawn from Demosthenes, especially 
from the business orations, and from the comic poets. 
If we come down a little by natural steps from 
the master to the disciples, we have, six or seven 
centuries later, the Platonists, — who also cannot be 
skipped, — Plotinus, Porpli^^ry, Proclus, Synesius, 



BOOKS. 181 

Jamblichus. Of Jambliclius the Emperor Julian 
said, " that he was posterior to Plato in time, not 
in genius." Of Plotinus, we have eulogies by 
Porphyry and Longinus, and the favor of the Em- 
peror Gallienus, — indicating the respect he inspired 
among his contemporaries. If any one who had 
read with interest the '' Isis and Osiris " of Plutarch 
should then read a chapter called " Providence," 
by Synesius, translated into English by Thomas 
Taylor, he will find it one of the majestic remains 
of literature, and, like one walking in the noblest of 
temples, will conceive new gratitude to his fellow- 
men, and a new estimate of their nobility. The im- 
aginative scholar will find few stimulants to his brain 
like these writers. He has entered the Elysian 
Fields ; and the grand and pleasing figures of gods 
and daemons and dsemoniacal men, of the " azonic " 
and the " aquatic gods," daemons with fulgid eyes, 
and all the rest of the Platonic rhetoric, exalted a lit- 
tle under the African sun, sail before his eyes. The 
acol3ne has mounted the tripod over the cave at 
Delphi ; his heart dances, his sight is quickened. 
These guides speak of the gods with such depth 
and with such pictorial details, as if they had been 
bodily present at the Olympian feasts. The reader 
of these books makes new acquaintance with his 
own mind ; new regions of thought are opened. 
Jamblichus's " Life of Pythagoras " works more 
directly on the will than the others ; since Pythago- 



182 BOOKS. 

ras was eminently a practical person, the founder 
of a school of ascetics and socialists, a planter of 
colonies, and nowise a man of abstract studies alone. 

The respectable and sometimes excellent transla- 
tions of Bohn's Library have done for literature 
what railroads have done for internal Intercourse. I 
do not hesitate to read all the books I have named, 
and all good books, in translations. What is really 
best in any book is translatable, — any real insight 
or broad human sentiment. Nay, I observe that, 
in our Bible, and other books of lofty moral tone, 
it seems easy and inevitable to render the rhythm 
and music of the original into phrases of equal mel- 
ody. The Italians have a fling at translators, — i tra- 
ditori traduttori ; but I thank them. I rarely read 
any Latin, Greek, German, Italian, sometimes not a 
French book in the original, which I can procure in 
a good version. I like to be beholden to the great 
metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives 
tributaries from every region under heaven. I 
should as soon think of swimming across Charles 
Iliver when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading 
all my books in originals, when I have them ren- 
dered for me in my mother-tongue. 

For history there is great choice of ways to 
bring the student through early Rome. If he can 
read Livy, he has a good book ; but one of the 
short English compends, some Goldsmith or Fergu- 
son, should be used, that will place in the cycle the 



BOOKS. 183 

bright stars of Plutarch. The poet Horace is the 
eye of the Augustan age ; Tacitus, the wisest of 
historians ; and Martial will give him Roman man- 
ners, — and some very bad ones, — in the early days 
of the Empire : but Martial must be read, if read 
at all, in his own tongue. These will bring him to 
Gibbon, who will take him in charge, and convey 
him with abundant entertainment down — with no- 
tice of all remarkable objects on the way — through 
fourteen hundred years of time. He cannot spare 
Gibbon, with his vast reading, — with such wit and 
continuity of mind, that, though never profound, his 
book is one of the conveniences of civilization, like 
the new railroad from ocean to ocean, — and, I 
think, will be sure to send the reader to his " Me- 
moirs of Himself," and the " Extracts from my 
Journal," and "Abstracts of my Readings," which 
will spur the laziest scholar to emulation of his pro- 
digious performance. 

Now having our idler safe down as far as the 
fall of Constantinople in 1453, he is in very good 
courses ; for here are trusty hands waiting for him. 
The cardinal facts of European history are soon 
learned. There is Dante's poem, to open the 
Italian Republics of the Middle Age ; Dante's " Vi- 
ta Nuova," to explain Dante and Beatrice ; and 
Boccaccio's ''Life of Dante," — a great man to de- 
scribe a greater. To help us, perhaps a volume or 
two of M. Sismondi's " Italian Republics " will be 



184 BOOKS. 

as good as the entire sixteen. When we come to 
Michel Anorelo, his Sonnets and Letters must be 
read, with his Life by Vasari, or, in our day, by 
Herman Grimm. For the Church, and the Feu- 
dal Institution, Mr. Hallam's "■ Middle Ages " will 
furnish, if superficial, yet readable and conceivable 
outlines. 

The " Life of the Emperor Charles V.," by the 
useful Robertson, is still the ke}^ of the following 
age. Ximenes, Columbus, Loyola, Luther, Eras- 
mus, Melanchthon, Francis I., Henry YIH., Ehza- 
beth, and Henry IV. of France, are his contem- 
poraries. It is a time of seeds and expansions, 
whereof our recent civilization is the fruit. 

If now the relations of England to European af- 
fairs bring him to British ground, he is arrived at 
the very moment when modern history takes new 
proportions. He can look back for the legends and 
mythology to the " Younger Edda " and the 
" Helmskringla " of Snorro Sturleson, to Mallet's 
" Northern Antiquities," to Elhs's ''Metrical Ro- 
mances," to Asser's " Life of Alfred " and Vener- 
able Bede, and to the researches of Sharon Turner 
and Palgrave. Hume will serve him for an intelK- 
gent guide, and in the Ehzabethan era he is at the 
richest period of the English mind, with the chief 
men of action and of thought which that nation has 
produced, and with a pregnant future before him. 
Here he has Shakspeare, Spenser, Sidney, Raleigh, 



BOOKS. 185 

Bacon, Chapman, Jonson, Ford, Beaumont and 
Fletcher, Herbert, Donne, Herrick ; and Milton, 
Marvell, and Dry den, not long after. 

In reading history, he is to prefer the history of 
individuals. He will not repent the time he gives 
to Bacon, — not if he read the "Advancement of 
Learning," the " Essays," the " Novum Organura," 
the " History of Henry VH.," and then all the 
" Letters " (especially those to the Earl of Devon- 
shire, explaining the Essex business), and all but 
his "Apophthegms." 

The task is aided by the strong mutual light 
which these men shed on each other. Thus, the 
works of Ben Jonson are a sort of hoop to bind all 
these fine persons together, and to the land to which 
they belong. He has written verses to or on all 
his notable contemporaries ; and what with so 
many occasional poems, and the portrait sketches in 
his " Discoveries," and the gossiping record of his 
opinions in his conversations with Drummond of 
Hawthornden, he has really illustrated the England 
of his time, if not to the same extent, yet much in 
the same way, as Walter Scott has celebrated the 
persons and places of Scotland. Walton, Chap- 
man, Herrick, and Sir Henry Wotton write also 
to the times. 

Among the best books are certain Autobiogra- 
phies : as, St. Augustine's Confessions ; Benvenuto 
Cellini's Life ; Montaigne's Essays ; Lord Herbert 



186 BOOKS. 

of Clierbury's Memoirs ; Memoirs of the Cardinal 
de Retz ; Rousseau's Confessions ; Linnseus's Di- 
ary ; Gibbon's, Hume's, Franklin's, Burns's, Al- 
fieri's, Goethe's, and Haydon's Autobiographies. 

Another class of books closely allied to these, and 
of like interest, are those which may be called 
Table- Talks : of which the best are Saadi's Guli- 
stan ; Luther's Table-Talk ; Aubrey's Lives ; 
Spence's Anecdotes ; Selden's Table-Talk ; Bos- 
well's Life of Johnson ; Eckermann's Conversa- 
tions with Goethe ; Coleridge's Table-Talk ; and 
Hazlitt's Life of Northcote. 

There is a class whose value I should designate 
as Favorites : such as Froissart's Chronicles ; South- 
ey's Chronicle of the CId ; Cervantes ; Sully's 
Memoirs ; Rabelais ; Montaigne ; Izaak Walton ; 
Evelyn ; Sir Thomas Browne ; Aubrey ; Sterne ; 
Horace Walpole ; Lord Clarendon ; Doctor John- 
son ; Burke, shedding floods of light on his times ; 
Lamb ; Landor ; and De Quincey ; — a list, of 
course, that may easily be swelled, as dependent on 
individual caprice. Many men are as tender and 
irritable as lovers in reference to these predilections. 
Lideed, a man's library is a sort of harem, and I 
observe that tender readers have a great pudency 
in showing their books to a stranger. 

The annals of bibliography afford many examples 
of the delirious extent to which book-fancying can 
go, when the legitimate delight in a book is trans- 



BOOKS. 187 

ferred to a rare edition or to a manuscript. This 
mania reached its heio-ht about the beo-innino; of the 
present century. For an autograpli of Shakspeare 
one hundred and fifty- five guineas were given. In 
May, 1812, the library of the Duke of Roxburgh 
was sold. The sale lasted forty-two days, — we 
abridge the story from Dibdin, — and among the 
many curiosities was a copy of Boccaccio published 
by Yaldarfer, at Venice, in 1471 ; the only perfect 
copy of this edition. Among tlie distinguished 
company which attended the sale were the Duke 
of Devonshire, Earl Spencer, and the Duke of 
Marlborough, then Marquis of Blandford. The 
bid stood at five hundred guineas. '' A thousand 
guineas," said Earl Spencer : " And ten," added 
the Marquis. You might hear a pin drop. All eyes 
were bent on the bidders. Now they talked apart, 
now ate a biscuit, now made a bet, but without the 
least thought of yielding one to the other. But to 
pass over some details, — the contest proceeded until 
the Marquis said, '' Two thousand pounds." The 
Earl Spencer bethought him like a prudent general 
of useless bloodshed and waste of powder, and had 
paused a quarter of a minute, when Lord Althorp 
with long steps came to his side, as if to bring his 
father a fresh lance to renew the fight. Father and 
son whispered together, and Earl Spencer ex- 
claimed, " Two thousand two hundred and fifty 
pounds ! " An electric shock went through the 



188 BOOKS. 

assembly. " And ten," quietly added the Marquis. 
There ended the strife. Ere Evans let the ham- 
mer fall, he paused ; the ivory instrument swept 
the air ; the spectators stood dumb, when the ham- 
mer fell. The stroke of its fall sounded on the 
farthest shores of Italy. The tap of that hammer 
was heard in the libraries of Rome, Milan, and 
Venice. Boccaccio stirred in his sleep of five hun- 
dred years, and M. Van Praet groped in vain 
among the royal alcoves in Paris, to detect a copy 
of the famed Valdarfer Boccaccio. 

Another class I distinguish by the term Vocabula- 
ries. Burton's " Anatomy of Melancholy " is a book 
of great learning. To read it is like reading in a dic- 
tionary. 'T is an inventory to remind us how many 
classes and species of facts exist, and, in observing 
into what strange and multiplex by-ways learning 
has strayed, to infer our opulence. Neither is a 
dictionary a bad book to read. There is no cant 
in it, no excess of explanation, and it is full of sug- 
gestion, — the raw material of possible poems and 
histories. Nothing is wanting but a little shuffling, 
sorting, ligature, and cartilage. Out of a hundred 
examples, Cornelius Agrippa " On the Vanity of 
Arts and Sciences " is a specimen of that scriba- 
tiousness which grew to be the habit of the glutton- 
ous readers of his time. Like the modern Germans, 
they read a literature while other mortals read a 
few books. They read voraciously, and must dis- 



BOOKS. 189 

burden themselves ; so they take any general topic, 
as, Melancholy, or Praise of Science, or Praise of 
Folly, and write and quote without method or end. 
Now and then out of that affluence of their learn- 
ing comes a fine sentence from Theophrastus, or 
Seneca, or Boethius, but no high method, no in- 
spiring efflux. But one cannot afford to read for a 
few sentences ; they are good only as strings of 
sugorestive words. 

There is another class, more needful to the pres- 
ent age, because the currents of custom run now 
in another direction, and leave us dry on this side ; 
— I mean the Imaginative. A right metaphysics 
should do justice to the co-ordinate powers of Imagi- 
nation, Insight, Understanding, and Will. Poetry, 
with its aids of Mythology and Romance, must be 
well allowed for an imaginative creature. Men 
are ever lapsing into a beggarly habit, wherein 
everything that is not ciphering, that is, which does 
not serve the tyrannical animal, is hustled out of 
sight. Our orators and writers are of the same 
poverty, and, in this rag-fair, neither the Imagina- 
tion, the great awakening power, nor the Morals, 
creative of genius and of men, are addressed. But 
though orator and poet be of this hunger party, 
the capacities remain. We must have symbols. 
The child asks you for a story, and is thankful for 
the poorest. It is not poor to him, but radiant with 
meaning. The man asks for a novel, — that is. 



190 BOOKS. 

asks leave for a few hours to be a poet, and to 
paint things as they ought to be. The youth asks 
for a poem. The very dunces wish to go to the 
theatre. What private lieavens can we not open, 
by yielding to all the suggestion of rich music ! We 
must have idolatries, mythologies, — some swing 
and verge for the creative power lying coiled and 
cramped here, driving ardent natures to insanity 
and crime if it do not find vent. Without the 
great arts which speak to the sense of beauty, a 
man seems to me a poor, naked, shivering crea- 
ture. These are his becoming draperies, which 
warm and adorn him. Whilst the prudential and 
economical tone of society starves the imagination, 
affronted Nature gets such indemnity as she may. 
The novel is that allowance and frolic the imagina- 
tion finds. Everything else pins it down, and men 
flee for redress to Byron, Scott, Disraeli, Dumas, 
Sand, Balzac, Dickens, Thackeray, and Reade. 
Their education is neglected; but the circulating- 
library and the theatre, as well as the trout-fishing, 
the Notch Mountains, the Adirondack country, the 
tour to Mont Blanc, to the White Hills, and the 
Ghauts, make such amends as they can. 

The imagination infuses a certain volatility and 
intoxication. It has a flute which sets the atoms 
of our frame in a dance, like planets ; and, once so 
liberated, the whole man reeling drunk to the mu- 
sic, they never quite subside to their old stony state. 



BOOKS. 191 

But what is the imagination ? Only an arm or 
•weapon of the interior energy ; only the precursor 
of the reason. And books that treat the old ped- 
antries of the world, our times, places, professions, 
customs, opinions, histories, with a certain freedom, 
and distribute things, not after the usages of America 
and Europe, but after the laws of right reason, and 
with as daring a freedom as we use in dreams, put 
us on our feet again, enable us to form an original 
judgment of our duties, and suggest new thoughts 
for to-morrow. 

*' Lucrezia Floriani," " Le Pechd de M. Antoine," 
" Jeanne," and " Consuelo," of George Sand, 
are great steps from the novel of one termination, 
which we all read twenty years ago. Yet how far 
off from life and manners and motives the novel still 
is ! Life lies about us dumb ; the day, as we know 
it, has not yet found a tongue. These stories are to 
the plots of real life what the figures in " La Belle 
Assemblee," which represent the fashion of the 
month, are to portraits. But the novel will find 
the way to our interiors one day, and will not al- 
ways be the novel of costume merely. I do not 
think it inoperative now. So much novel-read- 
ing cannot leave the young men and maidens un- 
touched ; and doubtless it gives some ideal dignity 
to the day. The young study noble behavior ; and 
as the player in "Consuelo" insists that he and his 
colleagues on the boards have taught princes the fine 



192 BOOKS. 

etiquette and strokes of grace and dlgnit}^ which 
they practise with so much effect in their villas and 
among their dependents, so I often see traces of 
the Scotch or the French novel in the courtesy and 
brilliancy of young midshipmen, collegians, and 
clerks. Indeed, when one observes how ill and 
ugly people make their loves and quarrels, 't is pity 
they should not read novels a little more, to import 
the fine generosities, and the clear, firm conduct, 
which are as becoming in the unions and separa- 
tions which love effects under shincrle roofs as in 

o 

palaces and among illustrious personages. 

In novels the most serious questions are begin- 
ning to be discussed. What made the popular- 
ity of '' Jane Eyre," but that a central question 
was answered in some sort ? The question there 
answered in regard to a vicious marriage will 
always be treated according to the habit of the 
party. A person of commanding individualism will 
answer it as Rochester does, — as Cleopatra, as 
Milton, as George Sand do, — magniiying the 
exception into a rule, dwarfing the world into an 
exception. A person of less courage, that is, of 
less constitution, will answer as the heroine does, 
— giving way to fate, to conventionalism, to the 
actual state and doings of men and women. 

For the most part, our novel-reading is a passion 
for results. We admire parks, and high-born beau- 
ties, and the homage of drawing-rooms, and parlia- 



BOOKS. 193 

raents. Tliey make us sceptical, by giving prom- 
inence to wealth and social position. 

I remember when some peering eyes of boys dis- 
covered that the oranges hancring on the bou^lis of 
an orange-tree in a gay piazza were tied to the twigs 
by thread. 1 fear 't is so with tlie novelist's pros- 
perities. Nature has a magic by which she fits 
the man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit 
of his character. But the novelist plucks this 
event here, and that fortune there, and ties them 
rashly to his figures, to tickle the fancy of his 
readers with a cloying success, or scare them with 
shocks of tragedy. And so, on the whole, 't is a 
juggle. We are cheated into laughter or wonder 
by feats which only oddly combine acts that we do 
every day. There is no new element, no power, 
no furtherance. 'T is only confectionery, not the 
raising of new corn. Great is the poverty of their 
inventions. She was beautiful^ and he fell in love. 
Money, and killing, and the Wandering Jew, and 
persuading the lover that his mistress is betrothed to 
another, — these are the main-springs: new names, 
but no new qualities in the men and women. Plence 
the vain endeavor to keep any bit of this fairy gold, 
which has rolled like a brook through our hands. A 
thousand thouorhts awoke ; o;reat rainbows seemed 
to span the sky, — a morning among the moun- 
tains ; — but we close the book, and not a ray re- 
mains in the memory of evening. But this passion 



194 BOOKS. 

for romance, and this disappointment, show how 
much we need real elevations and pure poetry : that 
which shall show us, in morning and night, in stars 
and mountains, and in all the plight and circum- 
stance of men, the analogous of our own thoughts, 
and a like impression made by a just book and by 
the face of Nature. 

If our times are sterile in genius, we must cheer 
us with books of rich and believinsj men who had 
atmosphere and amplitude about them. Every 
good fable, every mythology, every biography from 
a religious age, every passage of love, and even 
philosophy and science, when they proceed from an 
intellectual integrity, and are not detached and 
critical, have the imaginative element. The Greek 
fables, the Persian history (Firdusi), the "Young- 
er Edda " of the Scandinavians, the " Chronicle of 
the Cid," the poem of Dante, the Sonnets of Mi- 
chel Angelo, the English drama of Shakespeare, 
Beaumont and Fletcher, and Ford, and even the 
prose of Bacon and Milton, — in our time, the 
Ode of Wordsworth, and the poems and the prose 
of Goethe, have this enlargement, and inspire hope 
and generous attempts. 

There is no room left, — and yet I might as well 
not have begun as to leave out a class of books 
which are the best : I mean the Bibles of the 
world, or the sacred books of each nation, which 
express for each the supreme result of their expe- 



BOOKS. 195 

rience. After the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, 
which constitute the sacred books of Christendom, 
these are, the Desatir of the Persians, and the Zo- 
roastrlan Oracles ; the Vedas and Laws of Menu ; 
the Upanishads, the Vishnu Purana, the Bhagvat 
Geeta, of the Plindoos ; the books of the Buddhists ; 
the " Chinese Classic," of four books, containing the 
wisdom of Confucius and Mencius. Also such oth- 
er books as have acquired a semi-canonical authori- 
ty in the world, as expressing the highest sentiment 
and hope of nations. Such are the *' Hermes 
Trismegistus," pretending to be Egyptian remains ; 
the *' Sentences " of Epictetus ; of Marcus Anto- 
ninus ; the "Vishnu Sarma " of the Hindoos; tlie 
''Gulistan" of Saadi ; the "Imitation of Christ," 
of Thomas a Kempis ; and the " Thoughts " of 
Pascal. 

All these books are the majestic expressions of 
the universal conscience, and are more to our daily 
purpose than this year's almanac or this day's news- 
paper. But they are for the closet, and to be read 
on the bended knee. Their communications are 
not to be given or taken with the lips and the end 
of the tongue, but out of the glow of the cheek, 
and with the throbbing heart. Friendship should 
give and take, solitude and time brood and ripen, 
heroes absorb and enact them. They are not to be 
held by letters printed on a page, but are living 
characters translatable into every tongue and form 



196 BOOKS. 

of life. I read them on lichens and bark ; I 
watch them on waves on the beach ; they fly in 
Hrds, they creep in worms ; I detect them in laugh- 
ter and blushes and eye-sparkles of men and wo- 
men. These are Scriptures which the missionary 
might well carry over prairie, desert, and ocean, to 
Siberia, Japan, Timbuctoo. Yet he will find that 
the spirit which is in them journeys faster than 
he, and greets him on his arrival, — was there 
already long before him. Tiie missionary must be 
carried by it, and find it there, or he goes in vain. 
Is there any geography in these things ? We call 
them Asiatic, we call them primeval ; but perhaps 
that is only optical ; for Nature is always equal to 
herself, and there are as good eyes and ears now 
in the planet as ever were. Only these ejacu- 
lations of the soul are uttered one or a few at a 
time, at long intervals, and it takes millenniums to 
make a Bible. 

These are a few of the books which the old and 
the later times have yielded us, which will reward 
the time spent on them. In comparing the num- 
ber of good books with the shortness of life, many 
might well be read by proxy, if we had good prox- 
ies ; and it would be well for sincere young men to 
borrow a hint from the French Institute and the 
British Association, and, as they divide the whole 
body into sections, each of which sits upon and re- 
ports of certain matters confided to it, so let each 



BOOKS. 197 

scholar associate himself to such persons as he can 
rely on, in a literary club, in which each shall un- 
dertake a single work or series for which he is qual- 
ified. For example, how attractive is the whole 
literature of the " Roman de la Rose," the *' Fabli- 
aux," and the gaie science of the French Trouba- 
dours ! Yet who in Boston has time for that ? 
But one of our company shall undertake it, shall 
study and master it, and shall report on it, as un- 
der oath ; shall give us the sincere result, as it 
lies in his mind, adding nothing, keeping nothing 
back. Another member, meantime, shall as hon- 
estly search, sift, and as truly report, on British my- 
thology, the Round Table, the histories of Brut, 
Merlin, and Welsh poetry ; a third on the Saxon 
Chronicles, Robert of Gloucester, and William of 
Malmesbury ; a fourth, on Mysteries, Early Drama, 
" Gesta Romanorum," Collier, and Dyce, and the 
Camden Society. Each shall give us his grains of 
gold, after the washing ; and every other shall then 
decide whether this is a book indispensable to him 
also. 



CLUBS. 



CLUBS. 

We are delicate machines, and require nice treat- 
ment to get from us the maximum of power and 
pleasure. We need tonics, but must have those that 
cost little or no reaction. The flame of life burns 
too fast in pure oxygen, and nature has tempered 
the air with nitrogen. So thought is the native air 
of the mind, yet pure it is a poison to our mixed 
constitution, and soon burns up the bone-house 
of man, unless tempered with affection and coarse 
practice in the material world. Varied foods, cli- 
mates, beautiful objects, — and especially the alterna- 
tion of a large variety of objects, — are the necessity 
of this exigent system of ours. But our tonics, 
our luxuries, are force-pumps which exhaust the 
strength they pretend to supply ; and of all the 
cordials known to us, the best, safest, and most 
exhilarating, with the least harm, is society ; and 
every healthy and efficient mind passes a large 
part of life in the company most easy to him. 

We seek society with very different aims, and 
the staple of conversation is widely unlike in its 
circles. Sometimes it is facts, — running from those 



202 CLUBS. 

of daily necessity to the last results of science, — and 
has all degrees of importance ; sometimes it is love, 
and makes the balm of our early and of our latest 
days ; sometimes it is thought, as from a person who 
is a mind only ; sometimes a singing, as if the heart 
poured out all like a bird ; sometimes experience. 
With some men it is a debate ; at the approach of 
a dispute they neigh like horses. Unless there be 
an argument, they think nothing is doing. Some 
talkers excel in the precision with which they for- 
mulate their thoughts, so that you get from them 
somewhat to remember ; others lay criticism asleep 
by a charm. Especially women use words that 
are not words, — as steps in a dance are not steps, 
— but reproduce the genius of that they speak of; 
as the sound of some bells makes us think of the 
bell merely, whilst the church-chimes in the dis- 
tance bring the church and its serious memories 
before us. Opinions are accidental in people, — 
have a poverty-stricken air. A man valuing himself 
as the organ of this or that dogma is a dull com- 
panion enough ; but opinion native to the speaker 
is sweet and refreshing, and inseparable from his 
image. Neither do we by any means always go to 
people for conversation. How often to say noth- 
ing, — and yet must go ; as a child will long for 
his companions, but among them plays by him- 
self. 'T is only presence which we want. But one 
thing is certain, — at some rate, intercourse we 



CLUBS. 203 

must have. The experience of retired men is pos- 
itive, — that we lose our days and are barren of 
thought for want of some person to talk with. The 
understanding can no more empty itself by its own 
action than can a deal box. 

The clergyman walks from house to house all day 
all the year to give people the comfort of good talk. 
The physician helps them mainly in the same way, 
by healthy talk giving a right tone to the patient's 
mind. The dinner, the walk, the fireside, all have 
that for their main end. 

See how Nature has secured the communication 
of knowledge. 'T is certain that money does not 
more burn in a boy's pocket than a piece of news 
burns in our memory until we can tell it. And, in 
higher activity of mind, every new perception is 
attended with a thrill of pleasure, and the impart- 
ing of it to others is also attended with pleasure. 
Thought is the child of the intellect, and this child 
is conceived with joy and born with joy. 

Conversation is the laboratory and workshop of 
the student. The affection or sympathy helps. 
The wish to speak to the want of another mind as- 
sists to clear your own. A certain truth possesses 
us, which we in all ways strive to utter. Every 
time we say a thing in conversation, we get a me- 
chanical advantage in detaching it well and deliv- 
erly. I prize the mechanics of conversation. 'Tis 
pulley and lever and screw. To fairly disengage 



S04 CLUBS. 

the mass, and send it jingling down, n good boul- 
der, — a block of quartz and gold, to be worked up 
at leisure in the useful arts of life, — is a wonder- 
ful relief. 

What are the best days in memory ? Those 
in which we met a companion who was truly such. 
How sweet those hours when the day was not 
long enough to communicate and compare our in- 
tellectual jewels, — the favorite passages of each 
book, the proud anecdotes of our heroes, the deli- 
cious verses we had hoarded ! What a motive had 
then our solitary days ! How the countenance of 
our friend still left some light after he had gone ! 
We remember the time when the best gift we could 
ask of fortune was to fall in with a valuable com- 
panion in a ship's cabin, or on a long journey in 
the old stage-coach, where, each passenger being 
forced to know every other, and other employ- 
ments being out of question,, conversation naturally 
flowed, people became rapidly acquainted, and, if 
well adapted, more intimate in a day than if they 
had been neighbors for years. 

In youth, in the fury of curiosity and acquisition, 
the day is too short for books and the crowd of 
thoughts, and we are impatient of interruption. 
Later, when books tire, thought has a more languid 
flow; and the days come when we are alarmed, and 
say there are no thoughts. ' What a barren-witted 
pate is mine ! ' the student says ; ' I will go and learn 



CLUBS. 205 

whether I have lost my reason.' He seeks intelli- 
gent persons, whether more wise or less wise than 
he, who give him provocation, and at once and 
easily the old motion begins in his brain : thoughts, 
fancies, humors flow ; the cloud lifts ; the liorlzon 
broadens ; and the infinite opulence of things is 
again shown him. But the riglit conditions must 
be observed. Mainly he must have leave to be 
himself. Sancho Panza blessed the man who 
invented sleep. So I prize the good invention 
whereby everybody is provided with somebody who 
is glad to see him. 

If men are less when together than they are 
alone, they are also in some respects enlarged. 
They kindle each other ; and such is the power of 
suggestion, that each sprightly story calls out more ; 
and sometimes a fact that had long slept in the 
recesses of memory hears the voice, is welcomed to 
daylight, and proves of rare value. Every metaphy- 
sician must have observed, not only that no thought 
is alone, but that thoughts commonly go in pairs ; 
though the related thoughts first appeared in his 
mind at long distances of time. Things are in 
pairs : a natural fact has only half its value, until 
a fact in moral nature, its counterpart, is stated. 
Then they confirm and adorn each other ; a story 
is matched by another story. And that may be 
the reason why, when a gentleman has told a good 
thing, he immediately tells it again. 



206 CLUBS. 

Nothing seems so cheap as the benefit of conver- 
sation : nothing is more rare. 'T is wonderful how 
you are balked and baffled. There is plenty of in- 
telligence, reading, curiosity ; but serious, happy dis- 
course, avoiding personalities, dealing with results, 
is rare : and I seldom meet with a reading and 
thoughtful person but ha tells me, as if it were his 
exceptional mishap, that he has no companion. 

Suppose such a one to go out exploring different 
circles in search of this wise and genial counter- 
part, — he might inquire far and wide. Conversa- 
tion in society is found to be on a platform so 
low as to exclude science, the saint, and the poet. 
Amidst all the gay banter, sentiment cannot profane 
itself and venture out. The reply of old Isocra- 
tes comes so often to mind, — '* The things which 
are now seasonable I cannot say ; and for the things 
which I can say it is not now the time." Besides, 
who can resist the charm of talent ? The lover of 
letters loves power too. Among the men of w4t 
and learning, he could not withhold his homage 
from the gayety, grasp of memory, luck, splendor, 
and speed ; such exploits of discourse, such feats of 
society ! What new powers, what mines of wealth ! 
But when he came home, his brave sequins were 
dry leaves. He found either that the fact they 
had thus dizened and adorned was of no value, or 
that he already knew all and more than all they had 
told him. He could not find that he was helped by 



CLUBS. 207 

so much as one thought or principle, one solid 
fact, one commanding impulse : great was the daz- 
zle, but the gain was small. He uses his occa- 
sions; he seeks the company of those who have 
convivial talent. But the moment they meet, to 
be sure they begin to be something else than they 
were ; they play pranks, dance jigs, run on 
each other, pun, tell stories, try many fantastic 
tricks, under some superstition that there must be 
excitement and elevation ; — and they kill conver- 
sation at once. I know well the rusticity of the 
shy hermit. No doubt he does not make allowance 
enough for men of more active blood and habit. But 
it is only on natural ground that conversation can be 
rich. It must not begin with uproar and violence. 
Let it keep the ground, let it feel the connection with 
the battery. Men must not be off their centres. 

Some men love only to talk where they are mas- 
ters. They like to go to school-girls, or to boys, 
or into the shops where the sauntering people glad- 
ly lend an ear to any one. On these terms they 
give information, and please themselves by sallies 
and chat which are admired by the idlers ; and the 
talker is at his ease and jolly, for he can walk out 
without ceremony when he pleases. They go rare- 
ly to their equals, and then as for their own con- 
venience simply, making too much haste to intro- 
duce and impart their new whim or discovery ; 
listen badly, or do not listen to the comment or to 



208 CLUBS. 

the thought "by which the company strive to repay 
them ; rather, as soon as their own speech is done, 
they take their hats. Then there are the gladiators, 
to whom it is always a battle ; 't is no matter on 
which side, they fight for victory ; then the heady 
men, the egotists, the monotones, the steriles, and 
the impracticables. 

It does not help that you find as good or a better 
man than yourself, if he is not timed and fitted to 
you. The greatest sufferers are often those who have 
the most to say, — men of a delicate sympathy, 
who are dumb in mixed company. Able people, 
if they do not know how to make allowance for 
them, paralyze them. One of those conceited prigs 
who value nature only as it feeds and exhibits them 
is equally a pest with the roysterers. There must 
be large reception as well as giving. How delight- 
ful after these disturbers is the radiant, playful wit 
of — one whom I need not name, — for in every 
society there is his representative. Good-nature is 
strono-er than tomahawks. His conversation is all 
pictures : he can reproduce whatever he has seen ; 
he tells the best story in the county, and is of 
such genial temper that he disposes all others irre- 
sistibly to good-humor and discourse. Diderot said 
of the Abbe Galiani : " He was a treasure in rainy 
days ; and if the cabinet-makers made such things, 
everybody would have one in the country." 

One lesson we learn early, — that, in spite of 



CLUBS. 209 

seeming difference, men are all of one pattern. We 
readil}^ assume this with our mates, and are disap- 
pointed and angry if we find that we are premature, 
and that their watches are slower than ours. In fact, 
the only sin which we never forgive in each other is 
difference of opinion. We know beforehand that 
yonder man must think as we do. Has he not two 
hands, — two feet, — hair and nails ? Does he not 
eat, — bleed, — laugh, — cry ? His dissent from me 
is the veriest affectation. This conclusion is at once 
the logic of persecution and of love. And the 
ground of our indignation is our conviction that his 
dissent is some wilfulness he practises on himself. 
He checks the flow of his opinion, as the cross cow 
holds up her milk. . Yes, and we look into his eye, 
and see that he knows it and hides his eye from 
ours. 

But to come a little nearer to my mark, I am to 
say that there may easily be obstacles in the way of 
finding the pure article we are in search of; but 
when w^e find it, it is worth the pursuit, for beside its 
comfort as medicine and cordial, once in the right 
company, new and vast Values do not fail to appear. 
All that man can do for man is to be found in that 
market. There are great prizes in this game. Our 
fortunes in the world are as our mental equipment 
for this competition is. Yonder is a man who can 
answer the questions which I cannot. Is it so ? 
Hence comes to me boundless curiosity to know his 



210 CLUBS. 

experiences and his wit. Hence competition for 
the stakes dearest to man. What is a match at 
whist, or draughts, or bilHards, or chess, to a matcli 
of mother-wit, of knowledge, and of resources? 
However courteously we conceal it, it is social rank 
and spiritual power that are compared ; whether in 
the parlor, the courts, tlie caucus, the senate, or the 
chamber of science, — which are only less or larger 
theatres for this competition. 

He that can define, he that can answer a 
question so as to admit of no farther answer, is the 
best man. This was the meaning of the story of 
the Sphinx. In the old time conundrums were sent 
from king to king by ambassadors. The seven wise 
masters at Periander's banquet spent their time in 
answering them. The life of Socrates is a pro- 
pounding and a solution of these. So, in the hagi- 
ology of each nation, the lawgiver was in each case 
some man of eloquent tongue, whose sympathy- 
brought him face to face with the extremes of soci- 
ety. Jesus, Menu, the first Buddhist, Mahomet, 
Zertusht, Pythagoras, are examples. 

Jesus spent his life in discoursing with humble 
people on life and duty, in giving wise answers, 
showing that he saw at a larger angle of vision, 
and at least silencing those who were not generous 
enough to accept his thoughts. Luther spent his 
life so ; and it is not his theologic works, — his 
'' Commentary on the Galatians," and the rest, but 



CLUBS. 211 

his " Table-Talk," which is still read by men. Dr. 
Johnson was a man of no profound mind, — full of 
English limitations, English politics, English Church, 
Oxford philosophy ; yet having a large heart, mother- 
wit, and good sense, which impatiently overleaped 
his customary bounds, his conversation as reported 
by Boswell has a lasting charm. Conversation is 
the vent of character as well as of thought ; and 
Dr. Johnson impresses *his company, not only by 
the point of the remark, but also, when the point 
fails, because he makes it. His obvious religion or 
superstition, his deep wish that they should think 
so or so, weighs with them, — so rare is depth of 
feeling, or a constitutional value for a thought or 
opinion, among the light-minded men and women 
who make up society ; and though they know that 
there is in the speaker a degree of shortcoming, 
of insincerity, and of talking for victory, yet the 
existence of character, and habitual reverence for 
principles over talent or learning, is felt by the 
frivolous. 

One of the best records of the great German 
master, who towered over all his contemporaries ia 
the first thirty years of this century, is his con- 
versations as recorded by Eckermann ; and tha 
"Table-Talk" of Coleridge is one of the best re- 
mains of his genius. 

In the Norse legends, the gods of Valhalla, when 
they meet the Jotuns, converse on the perilous terms 



212 CLUBS. 

that he who cannot answer the other's questions for- 
feits his own life. Odin comes to the threshold of 
the Jotun Waftrhudnir in disguise, calling himself 
Gangrader ; is invited into the hall, and told that he 
cannot go out thence unless he can answer every 
question Waftrhudnir shall put. Waftrhudnir asks 
him the name of the god of the sun, and of the 
god who brings the night ; what river separates the 
dwellings of the sons of the giants from those of 
the gods ; what plain lies between the gods and 
Surtur, their adversary, etc. ; all which the dis- 
guised Odin answers satisfactorily. Then it is his 
turn to interrogate, and he is answered well for a 
time by the Jotun. At last he puts a question 
which none but himself could answer : " What 
did Odin whisper in the ear of his son Balder, when 
Balder mounted the funeral pile ? " The startled 
giant replies : " None of the gods knows what in 
the old time thou saidst in the ear of thy son : with 
death on my mouth have I spoken the fate-words 
of the generation of the ^sir ; with Odin con- 
tended I in wise words. Thou must ever the wis- 
est be." 

And still the gods and giants are so known, and 
still they play the same game in all the million 
mansions of heaven and of earth ; at all tables, 
clubs, and tete-d-tetes, the lawyers in the court- 
house, the senators in the capitol, the doctors in the 
academy, the wits in the hotel. Best is he who 



CLUBS. 213 

gives an answer tliat cannot be answered again. 
Omnis definitio periculosa esty and only wit has the 
secret. The same thing took place when Leibnitz 
came to visit Newton ; when Schiller came to 
Goethe ; when France, in the person of Madame 
de Stael, visited Goethe and Schiller ; when Hegel 
was the guest of Victor Cousin in Paris; when 
Linnaeus was the guest of Jussieu. It happened 
many years ago, that an American chemist carried 
a'letter of introduction to Dr. Dalton of Manches- 
ter, England, the author of the theory of atomic 
proportions, and was coolly enough received by the 
Doctor in the laboratory where he was engaged. 
Only Dr. Dalton scratched a formula on a scrap 
of paper and pushed it towards the guest, — " Had; 
he seen that ? " The visitor scratched on another 
paper a formula describing some results of his own 
with sulphuric acid, and pushed it across the table, 
— " Had he seen that ? " The attention of the Eng- 
lish chemist was instantly arrested, and they be- 
came rapidly acquainted. To answer a question so 
as to admit of no reply, is the test of a man, — to 
touch bottom every time. Hyde, Earl of Roches- 
ter, asked Lord-Keeper Guilford, " Do you not 
think I could understand any business in England 
in a month ? " '' Yes, my Lord," replied the other, 
" but I think you would understand it better in two 
months." When Edward L claimed to be ac- 
knowledged by the Scotch (1292) as lord para- 



214 CLUBS. 

mount, the nobles of Scotland replied, *' No answer 
can be made wliile the throne is vacant." When 
Henry III. (1217) plead duress against his people 
demanding confirmation and execution of the Char- 
ter, the reply was : *^ If this were admitted, civil 
wars could never close but by the extirpation of 
one of the contending parties." 

What can you do with one of these sharp respon- 
dents ? What can you do with an eloquent man ? 
No rules of debate, no contempt of court, no exclu- 
sions, no gag-laws can be contrived, that his first syl- 
lable Avill not set aside or overstep and annul. You 
can shut out the light, it may be ; but can you shut 
out gravitation ? You may condemn his book ; but 
can you fight against his thought ? That is always 
too nimble for you, anticipates you, and breaks out 
victorious in some other quarter. Can you stop the 
motions of good sense ? What can you do with 
Beaumarchais, who converts the censor whom the 
court has appointed to stifle his play into an ardent 
advocate ? The court appoints another censor, who 
shall crush it this time. Beaumarchais persuades 
him to defend it. The court successively appoints 
three more severe inquisitors ; Beaumarchais con- 
verts them all into triumphant vindicators of the 
play which is to bring in the Revolution. Who 
can stop the mouth of Luther, — of Newton ? — of 
Franklin, — of Mirabeau, — of Talleyrand ? 

These masters can make good their own place, 



CLUBS. 215 

and need no patron. Every variety of gift 

science, religion, politics, letters, art, prudence, 
war, or love — has its vent and exchange in con- 
versation. Conversation is the Olympic games 
whither every superior gift resorts to assert and 
approve itself, — and, of course, the inspirations of 
powerful and public men, v/ith the rest. But it is 
not this class, — whom the splendor of their accom- 
plishment almost inevitably guides into the vortex 
of ambition, makes them chancellors and command- 
ers of council and of action, and makes them at 
last fatalists, — not these whom we now consider. 
We consider those who are interested in thoughts, 
their own and other men's, and who delight in com- 
paring them, who think it the highest compliment 
they can pay a man, to deal with him as an intellect, 
to expose to him the grand and cheerful secrets 
perhaps never opened to their daily companions, 
to share with him the sphere of freedom and the 
simplicity of truth. 

But the best conversation is rare. Society seems 
to have agreed to treat fictions as realities, and 
realities as fictions ; and the simple lover of truth, 
especially if on very high grounds, — as a rehgious 
or intellectual seeker, — finds himself a stranger 
and alien. 

It is possible that the best conversation is between 
two persons who can talk only to each other. Even 
Montesquieu confessed that, in conversation, if he 



216 CLUBS. 

perceived he was listened to by a third person, 
it seemed to him from that moment the whole 
question vanished from his mind. I have known 
persons of rare abihtj who were heavy company to 
good, social men who knew well enough how to 
draw out others of retiring habit ; and, moreover, 
were heavy to intellectual men who ought to have 
known them. And does it never occur that we, 
perhaps, live with people too superior to be seen, 
— as there are musical notes too hicrh for the scale 
of most ears ? There are men who are great only 
to one or two companions of more opportunity, or 
more adapted. 

It was to meet these wants that in all civil nations 
attempts have been made to organize conversation 
by bringing together cultivated people under the 
most favorable conditions. 'T is certain there was 
liberal and refined conversation in the Greek, in 
the Roman, and in the Middle Age. There was 
a time when in France a revolution occurred in 
domestic architecture ; when the houses of the 
nobility, which, up to that time, had been con- 
structed on feudal necessities, in a hollow square, — 
the ground-floor being resigned to offices and stables, 
and the floors above to rooms of state and to lodg- 
ing-rooms, — were rebuilt with new purpose. It was 
the Marchioness of Rambouillet who first got the 
horses out of and the scholars into the palaces, hav- 
ing constructed her hdtel with a view to society, with 



CLUBS. 217 

superb suites of drawing-rooms on the same floor, 
and broke through the morgue of etiquette by invit- 
ing to her house men of wit and learning as well as 
men of rank, and piqued the emulation of Cardinal 
Richelieu to rival assemblies, and so to the found- 
ing of the French Academy. The history of the 
H6tel Rambouillet and its brilliant circles makes 
an important date in French civilization. And a 
history of clubs from early antiquity, tracing the 
efforts to secure liberal and refined conversation, 
through the Greek and Roman to the Middle Age, 
and thence down through French, English, and 
German memoirs, tracing the clubs and coteries in 
each country, would be an important chapter in 
history. We know well the Mermaid Club, in 
London, of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Chapman, 
Herrick, Selden, Beaumont and Fletcher ; its 
"Rules" are preserved, and many allusions to their 
suppers are found in Jonson, Herrick, and in Au- 
brey. Anthony Wood has many details of Harring- 
ton's Club. Dr. Bentley's Club held Newton, 
Wren, Evelyn, and Locke ; and we owe to Boswell 
our knowledge of the club of Dr. Johnson, Gold- 
smith, Burke, Gibbon, Reynolds, Garrick, Beau- 
clerk, and Percy. And we have records of the 
brilliant society that Edinburgh boasted in the first 
decade of this century. Such societies are possible 
only in great cities, and are the compensation which 
these can make to their dwellers for depriving them 



218 CLUBS. 

of the free intercourse with Nature. Every scholar 
is surrounded by wiser men than he — if they can- 
not write as well. Cannot they meet and exchange 
results to their mutual benefit and delight ? It was 
a pathetic experience when a genial and accom- 
plished person said to me, looking from his coun- 
try home to the capital of New England, " There 
is a town of two hundred thousand people, and not 
a chair in it for me." If he were sure to find at 
No. 2000 Tremont Street what scholars were abroad 
after the morning studies were ended, Boston would 
shine as the New Jerusalem to his eyes. 

Now this want of adapted society is mutual. 
The man of thought, the man of letters, the man 
of science, the administrator skilful in affairs, the 
man of manners and culture, whom you so much 
wish to find, — each of these is wishing to be found. 
Each wishes to open his thought, his knowledge, 
his social skill to the daylight in your company and 
affection, and to exchange his gifts for yours ; and 
the first hint of a select and intelligent company is 
welcome. 

But the club must be self-protecting, and obstacles 
arise at the outset. There are people who cannot 
well be cultivated, whom you must keep down and 
quiet if you can. There are those who have the in- 
stinct of a bat to fly against any lighted candle and 
put it out, — marplots and contradictors. There are 
those who go only to talk, and those who go only to 



CLUBS. 219 

hear : both are bad. A right rule for a club would 
be, — Admit no man whose presence excludes any 
one topic. It requires people who are not surprised 
and shocked, who do and let do, and let be, who 
sink trifles, and know solid values, and who take a 
great deal for granted. 

It is always a practical difficulty with clubs to 
regulate the laws of election so as to exclude per- 
emptorily every social nuisance. Nobody wishes 
bad manners. We must have loyalty and character. 
The poet Marvell w*as wont to say " that he would 
not drink wine with any one with whom he could 
not trust his life." But neither can we afford to be 
superfine. A man of irreproachable behavior and 
excellent sense preferred on his travels taking his 
chance at a hotel for company, to the charging 
himself with too many select letters of introduction. 
He confessed he liked low company. He said the 
fact was incontestable, that the society of gypsies 
was more attractive than that of bishops. The girl 
deserts the parlor for the kitchen ; the boy, for the 
wharf. Tutors and parents cannot interest him like 
the uproarious conversation he finds in the market 
or the dock. I knew a scholar, of some experience 
in camps, who said that he liked, in a bar-room, to 
tell a few coon stories, and put himself on a good 
footing with the company ; then he could be as silent 
as he chose. A scholar does not wish to be always 
pumping his brains : he wants gossips. The black- 



220 CLUBS. 

coats are good company only for black-coats ; but 
when the manufacturers, merchants, and ship-mas- 
ters meet, see how much they have to say, and how 
long the conversation lasts ! They have come from 
many zones ; they have traversed wide countries ; 
they know each his own arts, and the cunning arti- 
sans of his craft ; they have seen the best and the 
worst of men. Their knowledge contradicts the 
popular opinion and your own on many points. 
Things which you fancy wrong they know to be 
right and profitable ; things 'which you reckon 
superstitious they know to be true. They have 
found virtue in the strangest homes ; and in the rich 
store of their adventures are instances and examples 
which you have been seeking in vain for years,, and 
which tliey suddenly and unwittingly offer you. 

I remember a social experiment in this direc- 
tion, wherein it appeared that each of the members 
fancied he w^as in need of society, but himself 
unpresentable. On trial they all found that they 
could be tolerated by, and could tolerate, each 
other. Nay, the tendency to extreme self-respect 
which hesitated to join in a club was running rap- 
idly down to abject admiration of each other, when 
the club was broken up by new combinations. 

The use of the hospitality of the club hardly 
needs explanation. Men are unbent and social at 
table ; and I remember it was explained to me, in 
a Southern city, that it was impossible to set any 



CLUBS. 221 

public charity on foot unless through a taA^ern din- 
ner. I do not think our metropolitan charities 
would plead the same necessity ; but to a club met 
for conversation a supper Is a good basis, as it dis- 
arms all parties, and puts pedantry and business to 
the door. All are In good humor and at leisure, 
which are the first conditions of discourse ; the or- 
dinary reserves are thrown off, experienced men 
meet with the freedom of boys, and, sooner or later, 
impart all that is singular In their experience. 

The hospitalities of clubs are easily exaggerated. 
No doubt the suppers of wits and philosophers ac- 
quire much lustre by time and renown. Plutarch, 
Xenophon, and Plato, who have celebrated each a 
banquet of their set, have given us next to no data 
of the viands ; and It Is to be believed that an indif- 
ferent tavern dinner in such society was more rel- 
ished by the convives than a much better one in 
worse company. Herrick's verses to Ben Jonsou 
no doubt paint the fact : — 

" When we such clusters had 
As made us nobly wild, not mad ; 
And yet, each verse of thine 
Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine." 

Such friends make the feast satisfying ; and I notice 
that it was when things went prosperously, and the 
company was full of honor, at the banquet of the 
CId, that " the guests all were joyful, and agreed in 
one thing, — that they had not eaten better for 
three years." 



222 CLUBS. 

I need only hint the value of the club for bring- 
ing masters in their several arts to compare and ex- 
pand their views, to come to an understanding on 
these points, and so that their united opinion shall 
have its just influence on public questions of edu- 
cation and politics. 'T is agreed that in the sec- 
tions of the British Association more information is 
mutually and effectually communicated, in a feW 
hours, than in many months of ordinary corre- 
spondence, and the printing and transmission of 
ponderous reports. We know that Vliomme de lettres 
is a little wary, and not fond of giving away his 
seed-corn ; but there is an infallible way to draw 
him ou't, namely, by having as good as he. If 
you have Tuscaroora and he Canada, he may ex- 
chancje kernel for kernel. If his discretion is in- 
curable, and he dare not speak of fairy gold, he 
will yet tell what new books he has found, what old 
ones recovered, what men w^rite and read abroad. 
A principal purpose also is the hospitality of the 
club, as a means of receiving a worthy foreigner 
with mutual advantao;e. 

Every man brings into society some partial 
thouo;ht and local culture. We need I'ano-e and 
alternation of topics, and variety of minds. One 
likes in a companion a phlegm which it is a tri- 
umph to disturb, and, not less, to make in an old 
acquaintance unexpected discoveries of scope and 
power through the advantage of an inspiring sub- 



CLUBS. 223 

ject. Wisdom is like electricity. There is no per- 
manently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, 
who, being put into certain company, or other 
favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, 
as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while. 
But, while we look complacently at these obvious 
pleasures and values of good companions, I do not 
forget that Nature is always very much in earnest, 
and that her great gifts have something serious and 
stern. When we look for the highest benefits of 
conversation, the Spartan rule of one to one is 
usually enforced. Discourse, when it rises highest 
and searches deepest, when it lifts us into that 
mood out of which thoughts come that remain as 
stars in our firmament, is between two. 



COURAGE, 



COURAGE. 

I OBSERVE that there are three qualities which 
conspicuously attract the wonder and reverence of 
mankind : — 

1. Disinterestedness, as shown in indifference to 
the ordinary bribes and influences of conduct, — a 
purpose so sincere and generous that it cannot be 
tempted aside by any prospects of wealth or other 
private advantage. Self-love is, in almost all men, 
such an over-weight, that they are incredulous of a 
man's habitual preference of the general good to 
his own : but when they see it proved by sacrifices 
of ease, wealth, rank, and of life itself, there is 
no limit to their admiration. This has made the 
power of the saints of the East and West, who have 
led the religion of great nations. Self-sacrifice is 
the real miracle out of which all the reported mira- 
cles grew. This makes the renown of the heroes 
of Greece and Rome, — of Socrates, Aristides, and 
Phocion ; of Quintus Curtius, Cato, and Regulus ; 
of Hatem Tai's hospitality ; of Chatham, whose 
scornful magnanimity gave him immense popular- 
ity ; of Washington, giving his service to the public 
without salary or reward. 



228 COURAGE. 

2. Practical power. Men admire the man who 
can orcranize their wishes and tlioucrhts in stone 
and wood and steel and brass, — the man who can 
build the boat, who has the impiety to make the 
rivers run the way he wants them, who can lead 
his telegraph through the ocean from shore to shore ; 
who, sitting in his closet, can lay out the plans of 
a campaign, — sea-war and land-war ; such that the 
best generals and admirals, when all is done, see that 
they must thank him for success ; the power of better 
combination and foresight, however exhibited, which, 
whether it only plays a game of chess, or whether, 
more loftily, a cunning mathematician, penetrating 
the cubic weights of stars, predicts the planet which 
eyes had never seen ; or whether, exploring the 
chemical elements whereof we and the world are 
made, and seeing their secret, Franklin draws off 
the lightning in his hand, suggesting that one day 
a wiser geology shall make the earthquake harmless 
and the volcano an agricultural resource. Or here 
is one who, seeing the wishes of men, knows how to 
come at their end ; whispers to this friend, argues 
down that adversary, moulds society to his purpose, 
and looks at all men as wax for his hands, — takes 
command of them as the wind does of clouds, as 
the mother does of the child, or the man that 
knows more does of the man that knows less ; 
and leads them in glad surprise to the very point 
where they would be : this man is followed with 
acclamation. 



COURAGE. 229 



3. The third excellence is courage, the perfect 
will, which no terrors can shake, which is attracted 
by frowns or threats or hostile armies, nay, needs 
these to awake and fan its reserved energies into a 
pure flame, and is never quite itself until the hazard 
is extreme ; then it is serene and fertile, and all its 
powers play well. There is a Hercules, an Achil- 
les, a Rustem, an Arthur, or a Cid in the mythology 
of every nation ; and in authentic history, a Leoni- 
das, a Scipio, a Csesar, a Richard Coeur de Lion, a 
Cromwell, a Nelson, a Great Conde, a Bertrand du 
Guesclin, a Doge Dandolo, a Napoleon, a Massena, 
and Ney. 'T is said courage is common, but the 
immense esteem in which it is held proves it to be 
rare. Animal resistance, the instinct of the male 
animal when cornered, is no doubt common ; but 
the pure article, courage with eyes, courage with 
conduct, self-possession at the cannon's mouth, 
cheerfulness in lonely adherence to the right, is 
the endowment of elevated characters. I need not 
show how much it is esteemed, for the people give 
it the first rank. They forgive everything to it. 
What an ado we make through two thousand years 
about Thermopylae and Salamis ! What a memory 
of Poitiers and Crecy, and Bunker Hill, and Wash- 
ington's endurance ! And any man who puts his life 
in peril in a cause which is esteemed becomes the 
darling of all men. The very nursery-books, the 
ballads which delight boys, the romances which 



230 COURAGE. 

delight men, the favorite topics of eloc[uence, the 
thunderous emphasis which orators give to every 
martial defiance and passage of arms, and which 
the people greet, may testify. How short a time 
since this whole nation rose every morning to read 
or to hear the traits of courage of its sons and 
brothers in the field, and was never weary of 
the theme ! We have had examples of men who, 
for showing effective courage on a single occasion, 
have become a favorite spectacle to nations, and 
must be brought in chariots to every mass meeting. 

Men ai'e so charmed with valor, tliat they have 
pleased themselves with being called lions, leopards, 
eagles, and dragons, from the animals contemporary 
with us in the geologic formations. But the ani- 
mals have great advantage of us in precocity. 
Touch the snapping-turtle with a stick, and he 
seizes it with his teeth. Cut off his head, and the 
teeth will not let go the stick. Break the egg of 
the young, and the little embryo, before yet the 
eyes are open, bites fiercely; these vivacious crea- 
tures contriving, — shall we say ? — not only to 
bite after they are dead, but also to bite before they 
are born. 

But man begins life helpless. The babe is in 
paroxysms of fear the moment its nurse leaves it 
alone, and it comes so slowly to any power of self- 
protection, that mothers say the salvation of the life 
and health of a young* child is a perpetual miracle. 



COURAGE. 231 

The terrors of the child are quite reasonable, and 
add to his loveliness ; for his utter ignorance and 
weakness, and his enchantino; indignation on such 
a small basis of capital, compel every by-stander to 
take his part. Every moment, as long as he is 
awake, he studies the use of his eyes, ears, hands, 
and feet, learning how to meet and avoid his dan- 
<:;ers, and thus every hour loses one terror more. 
But this education stops too soon. A large majority 
of men being bred in families, and beginning early 
to be occupied day by day with some routine of safe 
industry, never come to the rough experiences that 
make the Indian, the soldier, or the frontiersman 
self-subsistent and fearless. Hence the high price 
of courage indicates the general timidity. " Man- 
kind," said Franklin, "are dastardly when they 
meet with opposition." In war even, generals are 
-seldom found eager to give battle. Lord Welling- 
ton said, " Uniforms were often masks " ; and again, 
" When my journal appears, many statues must 
come down." The Norse Sagas relate that when 
Bishop Magne reproved King Sigurd for his wicked 
divorce, the priest who attended the bishop, expect- 
ing every moment when the savage king would 
burst with rage and slay his superior, said ^' that 
he saw the sky no bigger than a calf-skin." And I 
remember when a pair of Irish girls, who had been 
run away with in a wagon by a skittish horse, said 
that, when he began to rear, they were so frightened 
that they could not see the horse. 



232 COURAGE. 

Cowardice shuts the eyes till the sky is not 
larger tlian a calf-skin ; shuts the eyes so that we 
cannot see the horse that is running away with us ; 
worse, shuts the eyes of the mind and chills the 
heart. Fear is cruel and mean. The political 
reio-ns of terror have heen reions of madness and 
malignity, — a total perversion of opinion ; society 
is upside down, and its best men are thought too 
bad to live. Then the protection which a house, a 
family, neigliborhood and property, even the first 
accumulation of savings, gives go in all times to 
generate this taint of the respectable classes. Vol- 
taire said, '' One of the chief misfortunes of honest 
people is that they are cowardly." Those political 
parties which gather-in the well-disposed portion of 
the community, — how infirm and ignoble! what 
white lips they have ! always on the defensive, as 
if the lead were intrusted to the journals, of^en 
written in great part by women and boys, who, with- 
out strength, wish to keep up the appearance of 
strength. They can do the hurras, the placarding, 
the flags, — and the voting, if it is a fair day; but 
the aggressive attitude of men who will have right 
done, will no longer be bothered with burglars and 
ruffians in the streets, counterfeiters in j^ublic offices, 
and thieves on the bench ; that part, the part of 
the leader and soul of the vigilance committee, 
must be taken by stout and sincere men who are 
really angry and determined. In ordinary, we 



COURAGE. 233 

have a snappish criticism which watches and con- 
tradicts the opposite party. We want the will 
which advances and dictates. When we get an 
advantage, as in Congress the other day, it is be- 
cause our adversary has committed a fault, not 
diat we have taken the initiative and given the law. 
Nature has made up her mind that what cannot 
defend itself shall not be defended. Complaining 
never so loud, and with never so much reason, is 
of no use. One heard much cant of peace-parties 
long ago in Kansas and elsewhere, that their strength 
lay in the greatness of their wrongs, and dissuading 
all resistance, as if to make this strength greater. 
But were their wrongs greater than the negro's ? 
and what kind of strength did they ever give him ? 
It was always invitation to the tyrant, and bred 
disgust in those who would protect the victim. 
What cannot stand must fall ; and the measure of 
our sincerity, and therefore of the respect of men, 
is the amount of health and wealth we will hazard 
in the defence of our right. An old farmer, my 
neighbor across the fence, when I ask him if he is 
not going to town-meeting, says : " No ; 't is no use 
balloting, for it will not stay ; but what you do with 
the gun will stay so." Nature has charged every 
one with his own defence as with his own support, 
and the only title I can have to your help is when 
I have manfully put forth all the means I possess to 
keep me, and, being overborne by odds, the by-stand- 



234 COURAGE. 

ers have a natural wish to interfere and see fail 

play- 
But with this pacific education, we have no readi- 
ness for bad times. I am much mistaken if every 
man who went to the army in the late war had not 
a lively curiosity to know how he should behave in 
action. Tender, amiable boys, wdio had never en- 
countered any rougher play than a base-ball match 
or a fishing excursion, were suddenly drawn up to 
face a bayonet charge or capture a battery. Of 
course, they must each go into that action with a 
certain despair. Each whispers to himself: "My 
exertions must be of small account to the result ; 
only will the benignant Heaven save me from dis- 
gracing myself and my friends and my State. Die ! 
O yes, I can well die ; but I cannot afford to mis- 
behave ; and I do not know how^ I shall feel." So 
great a soldier as the old French Marshal Montluc 
acknowledges that he has often trembled with fear, 
and recovered courage when he had said a prayei 
for the occasion. I knew a young soldier who 
died in the early campaign, who confided to his 
sister that he had made up his mind to volunteer for 
the war. " I have not," he said, " any proper cour- 
age, but I shall never let any one find it out." 
And he had accustomed himself always to go 
into whatever place of danger, and do whatever 
he w^as afraid to do, setting a dogged resolution to 
resist this natural infirmity. Coleridge has pre- 



COURAGE. 235 

served an anecdote of an officer in tlie British Navy, 
who told him that when he, in his first boat expe- 
dition, a midshipman in his fourteenth year, accom- 
pained Sir Alexander Ball, "as we were rowing up 
to the vessel we were to attack, amid a discharge 
of musketry, I was overpowered with fear, my 
knees shook, and I was ready to faint away. Lieu- 
tenant Ball seeing me, placed himself close beside 
me, took hold of my hand and whispered, ' Cour- 
age, my dear boy ! you Avill recover in a minute or 
so ; I was just the same when I first went out in this 
way.' It was as if an angel spoke to me. From 
that moment I was as fearless and as forward as the 
oldest of the boat's crew. But I dare not think 
what would have become of me, if, at that moment, 
he had scoffed and exposed me." 

Knowledge is the antidote to fear, — Knowledge, 
Use, and Reason, with its higher aids. The child 
is as much in danger from a staircase, or the 
fire-grate, or a bath-tub, or a cat, as the soldier 
from a cannon or an ambush. Each surmounts the 
fear as fast as he precisely understands the peril,- 
and learns the means of resistance. Each is liable 
to panic, which is, exactly, the terror of ignorance 
surrendered to the imagination. Knowledge is the 
encourao-er, knowledo-e that takes fear out of the 
heart, knowledge and use, which is knowledge in 
practice. They can conquer who believe they can. 
It is he who has done the deed once who does not 



236 COURAGE. 

shrink from attempting it again. It is the groom who 
knows the jumping horse well who can safely ride 
him. It is the veteran soldier, who, seeing the flash of 
the cannon, can step aside from the path of the hall. 
Use makes a hotter soldier than the most urgent 
considerations of duty, — familiarity with danger en- 
ablincr him to estimate the danser. He sees how 
much is the risk, and is not afflicted witli imaguia- 
tion ; knows practically Marshal Saxe's rule, that ev- 
ery soldier killed costs the enemy his weight in lead. 

The sailor loses fear as fast as he acquires com- 
mand of sails and spars and steam ; the frontiers- 
man, when he has a perfect rifle and has acquired a 
sure aim. To the sailor's experience every new 
circumstance suggests what he must do. The ter- 
rific chances which make the hours and the minutes 
long to the passenger, he whiles away by incessant 
application of expedients and repairs. To him a 
leak, a hurricane, or a water-spout is so much 
work. — no more. The hunter is not alarmed by 
bearsj catamounts, or wolves, nor the grazier by his 
bull, nor the dog-breeder by his bloodhound, nor 
an Arab by the simoom, nor a farmer by a fire in 
the woods. The forest on fire looks discouraging 
enough to a citizen : the farmer is skilful to fight 
it. The neighbors run together ; with pine boughs 
they can mop out the flame, and, by raking with the 
hoe a long but little trench, confine to a patch the 
fire which would easily spread over a hundred acres. 



COURAGE. 237 

In short, courage consists in equality to the prob- 
lem before us. The school-boy is daunted before his 
tutor by a question of arithmetic, because he does 
not yet command the simple steps of the solution 
which the boy beside him has mastered. These 
once seen, he is as cool as Archimedes, and cheerily 
proceeds a step farther. Courage is equality to the 
problem, in affairs, in science, in trade, in council, 
or in action ; consists in the conviction that the 
agents with whom you contend are not superior in 
strength or resources or spirit to you. The general 
must stimulate the mind of his soldiers to the per- 
ception that they are men, and the enemy is no 
more. Knowledge, yes ; for the danger of dangers is 
illusion. The eye is easily daunted ; and the drums, 
flags, shining helmets, beard, and mustache of the 
soldier have conquered you long before his sword 
or bayonet reaches you. 

But we do not exhaust the subject in the slight 
analysis ; we must not forget the variety of tem- 
peraments, eacli of which qualifies this power of re- 
sistance. It is observed that men with little imagi- 
nation are less fearful ; they wait till they feel pain, 
whilst others of more sensibility anticipate it, and 
suffer in the fear of the pang more acutely than in 
the pang. 'T is certain that the threat is sometimes 
more formidable than the stroke, and 't is possible 
that the beholders suffer more keenly than the vic- 
tims. Bodily pain is superficial, seated usually 



238 COURAGE. 

in the skin and the extremities, for the sake of giv- 
ing us warning to put us on our guard ; not in the 
vitals, where the rupture that produces death is 
perhaps not felt, and the victim never knew what 
hurt him. Pain is superficial, and therefore fear 
is. The torments of martyrdoms are probably most 
keenly felt by the by-standers. The torments are 
illusory. The first suffering is the last sufi:ering, 
the later hurts being lost on insensibility. Our af- 
fections and wishes for the external welfare of the 
hero tumultuously rush to expression in tears and 
outcries ; but we, like him, subside into indifferency 
and defiance, when we perceive how short is the 
longest arm of malice, how serene is the sufferer. 

It is plain that there is no separate essence called 
courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in 
the heart containing drops or atoms that make or 
give this virtue ; but it is the right or healthy state 
of every man, when he is free to do that which is 
constitutional to him to do. It is directness, — the 
instant performing of that which he ought. The 
thoughtful man says, you differ from me in opinion 
and methods ; but do you not see that I cannot think 
or act otherwise than I do ? that my way of living 
is organic ? And to be really strong we must ad- 
here to our own means. On organic action all 
strength depends. Hear what women say of doing 
a task by sheer force of will : it costs them a fit of 
sickness. Plutarch relates that the Pythoness who 



COURAGE. 239 

tried to prophesy without command in the Temple 
at Delphi, though she performed the usual rites, and 
inhaled the air of the cavern standing on the tripod, 
fell into convulsions, and died. Undoubtedly there 
is a temperamental courage, a warlike blood, which 
loves a fight, does not feel itself except in a quarrel, 
as one sees in wasps, or ants, or cocks, or cats. 
The like vein appears in certain races of men and 
in individuals of every race. In every school there 
are certain fighting boys ; in every society, the con- 
tradicting men ; in every town, bravoes and bullies, 
better or worse dressed, fancy-men, patrons of the 
cock-pit and the ring. Courage is temperamental, 
scientific, ideal. Swedenborg has left this record 
of his king: "Charles XII., of Sweden, did not 
know what that was which others called fear, nor 
what that spurious valor and daring that is excited 
by inebriating draughts, for he never tasted any 
liquid but pure water. Of him we may say, that 
he led a life more remote from death, and in fact 
lived more, than any other man." It w^as told of 
the Prince of Conde, " that there not being a more 
furious man in the world, danger in fight never dis- 
turbs him more than just to make him civil, and to 
command in words of great obligation to his officers 
and men, and without any the least disturbance to 
his judgment or spirit." Each has his own courage, 
as his own talent ; but the courage of the tiger is 
one, and of the horse another. The dog that scorns 



240 CaURAGE. 

to fight, will figlit for his master. The llama that 
will carry a load if you caress him, wnll refuse food 
and die if he is scourged. The fury of onset is one, 
and of calm endurance another. There is a courao-e 
of the cabinet as well as a courage of the field ; 
a courage of manners in private assemblies, and 
another in public assemblies ; a courage which 
enables one man to speak masterly to a hostile com- 
pany, whilst another man who can easily face a 
cannon's mouth dares not open his own. 

There is a courage of a merchant in dealing with 
his trade, by which dangerous turns of affairs are 
met and prevailed over. Merchants recognize as 
much gallantry, well judged too, in the conduct of 
a wise and upright man of business, in difficult times, 
as soldiers in a soldier. 

There is a courage in the treatment of every art 
by a master in architecture, in sculpture, in paint- 
ing, or in poetry, each cheering the mind of the 
spectator or receiver as by true strokes of ge- 
nius, which yet nowise implies the presence of 
physical valor in the artist. This is the courage of 
genius, in every kind. A certain quantity of power 
belongs to a certain quantity of faculty. The 
beautiful voice at church goes sounding on, and cov- 
ers up in its volume, as in a cloak, all the defects of 
the choir. The singers, I observe, all yield to it, 
and so the fair singer indulges her instinct, and 
dares, and dares, because she knows she can. 



COURAGE. 241 

It gives the cutting edge to every profession. The 
judge puts his mind to the tangle of contradictions 
in the case, squarely accosts the question, and, by 
not being afraid of it, by dealing with it as business 
which must be disposed of, he sees presently that 
common arithmetic and common methods apply to 
this affair. Perseverance strips it of all peculiari- 
ty, and ranges it on the same ground as other 
business. Morphy played a daring game in chess : 
the daring was only an illusion of the spectator, 
for the player sees his move to be well fortified and 
safe. You may see the same dealing in criticism ; 
a new book astonishes for a few days, takes itself 
out of common jurisdiction, and nobody knows what 
to say of it : but the scholar is not deceived. The 
old principles which books exist to express are more 
beautiful than any book ; and out of love of the 
reality he is an expert judge how far the book has 
approached it and where it has come short. In 
all applications 't is the same power, — the habit 
of reference to one's own mind, as the home of all 
truth and counsel, and which can easily dispose of any 
book because it can very well do without all books. 
When a confident man comes into a company mag- 
nifying this or that author he has freshly read, the 
company grow silent and ashamed of their igno- 
rance. But I remember the old professor, whose 
searching mind engraved every word he spoke on 
the memory of the class, when we asked if he had 



242 COURAGE. 

read this or that shining novelty, " No, I have 
never read that book " ; instantly the book lost 
credit, and was not to be heard of again. 

Every creature has a courage of his constitution 
fit for his duties : — Archimedes, the courage of a 
geometer to stick to his diagram, heedless of the 
siege and sack of the city ; and the Roman soldier 
his faculty to strike at Archimedes. Each is strong, 
relying on his own, and each is betrayed when he 
seeks in himself the courage of others. 

Captain John Brown, the hero of Kansas, said 
to me in conversation, that " for a settler in a new 
country, one good, believing, strong-minded man is 
■worth a hundred, nay, a thousand men without 
character ; and that the right men will give a per- 
manent direction to the fortunes of a state. As 
for the bullying drunkards, of which armies are 
usually made up, he thought cholera, small-pox, and 
consumption as valuable recruits." He held the 
belief that courage and chastity are silent concern- 
ing themselves. He said, " As soon as I hear one 
of my men sa}', ' Ah, let me only get my eye on 
such a man, I '11 bring him down,' I don't expect 
much aid in the fight from that talker. 'T is the 
quiet, peaceable men, the men of principle, that 
make the best soldiers." 

"'Tis still observed those men most valiant are 
Who are most modest ere they came to war." 

True courage is not ostentatious ; men who wish 



COURAGE. 243 

to inspire terror seem thereby to confess themselves 
cowards. Why do they rely on it, but because they 
know how potent it is with themselves ? 

The true temper has genial influences. It makes 
a bond of union between enemies. Governor Wise 
of Virginia, in the record of his first interviews 
with his prisoner, appeared to great advantage. If 
Governor Wise is a superior man, or inasmuch as 
he is a superior man, he distinguishes John Brown. 
As they confer, they understand each other swiftly ; 
each respects the other. If opportunity allowed, 
they would prefer each other's society and desert 
their former companions. Enemies would become 
affectionate. Hector and Achilles, Richard and 
Saladin, WelUngton and Soult, General Daumas 
and Abdel Kader, become aware that they are 
nearer and more alike than any other two,. and, if 
their nation and circumstance did not keep them 
apart, would run into each other's arms. 

See too what good contagion belongs to it. Ev- 
erywhere it finds its own with magnetic affinity. 
Courage of the soldier awakes the courage of wo- 
man. Florence Nightingale brings lint and the 
blessino; of her shadow. Heroic women offer them- 
selves as nurses of the brave veteran. The troop 
of Virginian infantry that had marched to guard 
the prison of John Brown ask leave to pay their 
respects to the prisoner. Poetry and eloquence 
catch the hint, and soar to a pitch unknown be- 



244 COURAGE. 

fore. Everything feels the new breath, except 
the old doting, nigh-dead politicians, whose heart 
the trumpet of resurrection could not wake. 

The charm of the best courages is that they are 
inventions, inspirations, flashes of genius. The hero 
could not have done the feat at another hour, in a 
low^er mood. The best act of the marvellous genius 
of Greece was its first act; not in the statue or 
the Parthenon, but in the instinct which, at Ther- 
mopylae, held Asia at bay, kept Asia out of Europe, 
— Asia with its antiquities and organic slavery, — 
from corrupting the hope and new morning of the 
West. The statue, the architecture, Avere the later 
and inferior creation of the same genius. In view 
of this moment of history, we recognize a certain 
prophetic instinct better than wisdom. Napoleon 
said well, '' My hand is immediately connected with 
my head " ; but the sacred courage is connected 
with the heart. The head is a half, a fraction, 
until it is enlarged and inspired by the moral senti- 
ment. For it is not the means on which w^e draw, 
as health or wealth, practical skill or dexterous 
talent, or multitudes of followers, that count, but 
the aims only. The aim reacts back on the means. 
A great aim aggrandizes the means. The meal 
and water that are the commissariat of the forlorn 
hope that stake their lives to defend the pass are 
sacred as the Holy Grail, or as if one had eyes to 
see in chemistry the fuel that is rushing to feed the 
sun. 



COURAGE. 245 

There is a persuasion in the soul of man that 
he is here for cause, that he was put down in this 
place by the Creator to do the work for which 
he inspires him, that thus he is an overmatch 
for all antagonists that could combine against him. 
The pious Mrs. Hutchinson says of some passages 
in the defence of Nottingham against the Cava- 
liers, " It was a great instruction that the best and 
highest courages are beams of the Almighty." And 
whenever the religious sentiment is adequately af- 
firmed, it must be with dazzhng courage. As long 
as it is cowardly insinuated, as with the wish to 
succor some partial and temporary interest, or to 
make it affirm some pragmatical tenet which our 
parish church receives to-day, it is not imparted, 
and cannot inspire or create. For it is always new, 
leads and surprises, and practice never comes up 
with it. There are ever appearing in the world men 
who, almost as soon as they are born, take a bee-line 
to the rack of the inquisitor, the axe of the tyrant, 
like Jordano Bruno, Yanini, Huss, Paul, Jesus, and 
Socrates. Look at Fox*s Lives of the Martyrs, 
Sewel's History of the Quakers, Southey's Book of 
the Church, at the folios of the Brothers Bollandi, 
who collected the lives of twenty-five thousand mar- 
tyrs, confessors, ascetics, and self-tormentors. There 
is much of fable, but a broad basis of fact. The ten- 
der skin does not shrink from bayonets, the timid 
woman is not scared by fagots ; the rack is not 



246 COURAGE. 

frightful, nor the rope ignominious. The poor Pu- 
ritan, Antony Parsons, at the stake, tied straw on his 
head, when the fire approached him, and said, *' This 
is God's hat." Sacred courage indicates that a man 
loves an idea better than all things in the world ; that 
he is aiming neither at pelf or comfort, but will ven- 
ture all to put in act the invisible thought in his mind. 
He is everywhere a liberator, but of a freedom that is 
ideal ; not seeking to have land or money or con- 
veniences, but to have no other limitation than that 
which his own constitution imposes. He is free to 
speak truth ; he is not free to lie. He wishes to 
break every yoke all over the world which hinders 
his brother from acting after his thought. 

There are degrees of courage, and each step up- 
ward makes us acquainted with a higher virtue. 
Let us say then frankly that the education of the 
will is the object of our existence. Poverty, the 
prison, the rack, the fire, the hatred and execra- 
tions of our fellow-men, appear trials beyond the 
endurance of common humanity ; but to the hero 
whose intellect is aggrandized by the soul, and so 
measures these penalties against the good which liis 
thought surveys, these terrors vanish as darkness at 
sunrise. 

We have little right in piping times of peace to 
pronounce on these rare heights of character ; but 
there is no assurance of security. In the most 
private life, difficult duty is never far off. There- 



COURAGE. 247 

fore we must think with courage. Scholars and 
thinkers are prone to an effeminate habit, and shrink 
if a coarser shout comes up from the street, or a 
brutal act is recorded in the journals. The Medical 
College piles up in its museum its grim monsters of 
morbid anatomy, and there are melancholy sceptics 
with a taste for carrion who batten on the hideous 
facts in history, — persecutions, inquisitions, St. 
Bartholomew massacres, devilish lives, Nero, Caesar, 
Borgia, Marat, Lopez, — men in whom every ray 
of humanity was extinguished, parricides, matri- 
cides, and whatever moral monsters. These are 
not cheerful facts, but the}^ do not disturb a healthy 
mind ; they require of us a patience as robust as 
the energy that attacks us, and an unresting ex- 
ploration of final causes. Wolf, snake, and croco- 
dile are not inharmonious in nature, but are made 
useful as checks, scavengers, and pioneers ; and we 
must have a scope as large as Nature's to deal with 
beast-like men, detect what sculHon function is as- 
signed them, and foresee in the secular melioration 
of the planet how these will become unnecessary, 
and will die out. 

He has not learned the lesson of hfe who does 
not every day surmount a fear. I do not wish to 
put myself or any man into a theatrical position, or 
urge him to ape the courage of his comrade. Have 
the courage not to adopt another's courage. There 
is scope and cause and resistance enough for us in 



248 COURAGE. 

our proper work and circumstance. And there is 
no creed of an honest man, be he Christian, Turk, 
or Gentoo, which does not equally preach it. If 
you have no faith in beneficent power above you, 
but see only an adamantine fate coiling its folds 
about nature and man, then reflect that the best use 
of fate is to teach us courage, if only because base- 
ness cannot change the appointed event. If you 
accept your thoughts as inspirations from the Su- 
preme Intelligence, obey them when they prescribe 
difficult duties, because they come only so long as 
they are used ; or, if your scepticism reaches to 
the last verge, and you have no confidence in any 
foreign mind, then be brave, because there is one 
good opinion which must always be of consequence 
to you, namely, your own. 



I am permitted to enrich my chapter by adding 
an anecdote of pure courage from real life, as nar- 
rated in a ballad by a lady to whom all the particu- 
lars of the fact are exactly known. 



GEOEGE NIDIVER. 

Men have done brave deeds, 

And bards have sung them well : 

I of good George Nidiver 
Now the tale will tell. 



COURAGE. 

In Californian mountains 
A hunter bold was he : 

Keen his eye and sure his aim 
As any you should see. 

A little Indian boy 

Followed him everywhere, 
Eager to share the hunter's joy. 

The hunter's meal to share. 

And when the bird or deer 
Fell by the hunter's skill, 

The boy was always near 
To help with right good-will. 

One day as through the cleft 
Between two mountains steep, 

Shut in both right and left, 
Their questing way they keep. 

They see two grizzly bears 
With hunger fierce and fell 

Rush at them unawares 

Right down the narrow dell. 



The boy turned round with screams, 
And ran with terror wild ; 

One of the pair of savage beasts 
Pursued the shrieking child. 

The hunter raised his gun, — 
He knew one charge was all, — 

And through the boy's pursuing foe 
He sent his only ball. 

The other on George Nidiver 
Came on with dreadful pace : 

The hunter stood unarmed. 
And met him face to face. 



240 



250 COURAGE. 

I say unarmed he stood. 

Against those frightful paws 
The rifle but, or club of wood, 
^ Could stand no more than straws. 

George Nidiver stood still 
And looked him in the face ; 

The wild beast stopped amazed, 
Then came with slackening pace. 

Still firm tlie hunter stood, 
Although his heart beat high ; 

Again the creature stopped. 
And gazed with wondering eye. 

The hunter met his gaze, 
Nor yet an inch gave way ; 

The bear turned slowly round. 
And slowly moved away. 

What thoughts were in his mind 
It would be hard to spell : 

What thoughts were in George Nidiver 
I rather guess than tell. 

But sure that rifle's aim, 

Swift choice of generous part. 

Showed in its passing gleam 
The depths of a brave heart. 



SUCCESS. 



SUCCESS. 

Our American people cannot be taxed with 
slowness in performance or in praising their per- 
formance. The earth is shaken by our engineries. 
We are feeling our youth and nerve and bone. 
We have the power of territory and of sea-coast, 
and know the use of these. We count our cen- 
sus, we read our growing vaUiations, we survey 
our map, which becomes old in a year or two. Our 
eyes run approvingly along the lengthened lines of 
railroad and telegraph. We have gone nearest to 
the Pole. We have discovered the Antarctic conti- 
nent. We interfere in Central and South America, 
at Canton, and in Japan ; we are adding to an al- 
ready enormous territory. Our political constitu- 
tion is the hope of the world, and we value ourselves 
on all these feats. 

'T is the way of the world ; 't is the law of 
youth, and of unfolding strength. Men are made 
each with some triumphant superiority, which, 
through some adaptation of fingers, or ear, or eye, 
or ciphering, or pugiHstic or musical or literary 
craft, enriches the community with a new art ; and 



254 SUCCESS. 

not only we, but all men of European stock value 
these certificates. Giotto could draw a perfect cir- 
cle ; Ervvin of Steinbach could build a minster; 
Olaf, king of Norway, could run round his galley 
on the blades of the oars of the rowers, when the 
ship was in motion ; Ojeda could run out swiftly on 
a plank projected from the top of a tower, turn round 
swiftly, and come back ; Ev^elyn writes from Rome: 
"Bernini, the Florentine sculptor, architect, painter, 
and poet, a little before my coming to Rome, gave 
a public opera, wherein he painted the scenes, cut 
the statues, invented the engines, composed the 
music, writ the comedy, and built the theatre." 

'' There is nothing in war," said Napoleon, "which 
I cannot do by my own hands. If there is nobody 
to make gunpowder, I can manufacture it. The 
gun-carriages I know how to construct. If it is ne- 
cessary to make cannons at the forge, I can make 
them. The details of working them in battle, if 
it is necessary to teach, I shall teach them. In 
administration, it is I alone who have arranged 
the finances, as you know." 

It is recorded of Linnceus, among many proofs of 
his beneficent skill, that when the timber in the ship- 
yards of Sweden was ruined by rot, Linnaeus was 
desired by the government to find a remedy. He 
studied the insects that infested the timber, and 
found that they laid their eggs in the logs within 
certain days in April, and he directed that during 



SUCCESS. 255 

ten days at that season the logs should be immersed 
under water in the docks ; which being done the 
timber was found to be uninjured. 

Columbus at Veragua found plenty of gold ; but 
leaving the coast, the ship full of one hundred and 
fifty skilful seamen, — some of them old pilots, and 
with too much experience of their craft and treach- 
ery to him, — the wise admiral kept his private 
record of his homeward path. And when he reached 
Spain, he told the King and Queen, '' that they 
may ask all the pilots who came with him, where is 
Veragua. Let them answer and say, if they know 
where Veragua lies. I assert that they can give no 
other account than that they went to lands where 
there was abundance of gold, but they do not know 
the way to return thither, but would be obliged to 
go on a voyage of discovery as much as if they had 
never been there before. There is a mode of reck- 
oning," he proudly adds, ^' derived from astronomy, 
which is sure and safe to any who understands it." 

Hippocrates in Greece knew how to stay the de- 
vouring plague which ravaged Athens in his time, 
and his skill died with him. Dr. Benjamin Rush, in 
Philadelphia, carried that city heroically through the 
yellow fever of the year 1T93. Leverrier carries the 
Copernican system in his head, and knew where to 
look for the new planet. We have seen an American 
woman write a novel of which a milHon copies were 
sold in all languages, and which had one merit, of 



256 SUCCESS. 

speaking to the universal heart, and was read with 
equal ii\terest to three audiences, namely, in the 
parlor, in the kitchen, and in tlie nursery of every 
house. We have seen women who could institute 
hospitals and schools in armies. We have seen a 
woman who by pure song could mek the souls of 
whole populations. And there is no limit to these 
varieties of talent. 

These are arts to be thankful for, — each one as 
it is a new direction of human power. We cannot 
choose but respect them. Our civilization is made 
up of a million contributions of this kind. For suc- 
cess, to be sure, we esteem it a test in other people, 
since we do first in ourselves. We respect our- 
selves more if we have succeeded. Neither do we 
grudge to each of these benefactors the praise or 
the profit which accrues from his industry. 

Here are already quite different degrees of moral 
merit in these examples. I don't know but we and 
our race elsewhere seta higher value on wealth, vic- 
tory, and coarse superiority of all kinds, than other 
men, — have less tranquillity of mind, are less easily 
contented. The Saxon is taught from his infancy 
to wish to be first. The Norseman was a restless 
rider, fighter, freebooter. The ancient Norse ballads 
describe him as afilicted with this inextinguishable 
thirst of victory. The mother says to her son : — 

" Success shall be in thy courser tall, 
Success in thyself, which is best of all. 



SUCCESS. 257 

Success in thy hand, success in thy foot, 
In struggle with man, in battle with brute : — 
The holy God and Saint Drothin dear 
Shall never shut eyes on ihy career ; 

Look out, look out, Svend Vonved ! " 

These feats that we extol do not signify so much 
as we say. These boasted arts are of very recent 
origin. They are local conveniences, but do not 
really add to our stature. The greatest men of the 
world have managed not to w^ant them. Newton- 
was a great man, without telegraph, or gas, or 
steam-coach, or rubber shoes, or lucifer-matches, or 
ether for his pain ; so was Shakspeare, and Alfred, 
and Scipio, and Socrates. These are local conven- 
iences, but how easy to go now to parts of the 
world where not only all these arts are wanting, 
but where they are despised. The Arabian sheiks, 
the most dignified people in the planet, do nofc 
want them ; yet have as much self-respect as the 
English, and are easily able to impress the French- 
man or the American who visits thein with the 
respect due to a brave and sufficient man. 

These feats have, to be sure, great difference of 
merit and some of them involve power of a high 
kind. But the public values the invention more 
than the inventor does. The inventor knows there 
is much more and better where this came from. 
The public sees in it a lucrative secret. Men see 
the reward which the inventor enjoys, and they 
think, ' How shall we win that ? ' Cause and effect 



258 SUCCESS. 

are a little tedious; how to leap to the result by 
short or by false means ? We are not scrupulous. 
What we ask is victory, without regard tAlthe cause ; 
after the Rob Roy rule, after the Napoleon rule, to 
be the strongest to-day, — the way of the Talley- 
rands, — prudent people, whose watches go faster 
than their neighbors', and who detect the first mo- 
ment of decline, and throw themselves on the in- 
stant on the winning side. I have heard that Nel- 
son used to say, "Never mind the justice or the 
impudence, only let me succeed." Lord Brough- 
am's single duty of counsel is, '' to get the prisoner 
clear." Fuller says 't is a maxim of lawyers, " that 
a crown once worn cleareth all defects of the wearer 
thereof." Rien ne reussit mieux que le succes. And 
we Americans are tainted with this insanity, as our 
bankruptcies and our reckless politics may show. 
We are great by exclusion, grasping, and egotism. 
Our success takes from all what it gives to one. 
'T is a haggard, malignant, careworn running for 
luck. 

Egotism is a kind of buckram that gives momen- 
tary strength and concentration to men, and seems 
to be much used in nature for fabrics in which local 
and spasmodic energy is required. I could point to 
men in this country of indispensable importance to 
the carrying on of American life, of . this humor, 
whom we could ill spare ; any one of them would 
be a national loss. But it spoils conversation. They 



SUCCESS. 259 

will not try conclusions with you. They are ever 
thrusting this pampered self between you and them. 
It is plain they have a long education to undergo 
to reach simplicity and plain-dealing, which are 
what a wise man mainly cares for in his companion. 
Nature knows how to convert evil to good ; Nature 
utihzes misers, fanatics, show-men, egotists, to ac- 
complish her ends ; but we must not think better 
of the foible for that. The passion for sudden suc- 
cess is rude and puerile, just as war, cannons, and 
executions are used to clear the ground of bad, 
lumpish, irreclaimable savages, but always to the 
damage of the conquerors. 

I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to 
get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on 
midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind 
by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery 
without apprenticeship, or the sale of goods through 
pretending that they sell, or power through making 
believe you are powerful, or through a packed jury 
or caucus, bribery and " repeating " votes, or wealth 
by fraud. They think they have got it, but they 
have got something else, — a crime which falls for 
another crime, and anotlier devil behind that; these 
are steps to suicide, infamy, and the harming of 
mankind. We countenance each other in this life 
of show, puffing, advertisement, and manufacture 
of public opinion ; and excellence is lost sight of 
in the hunger for sudden performance and praise. 



260 SUCCESS. 

There was a wise man, an Italian artist, Michel 
Angelo, who writes thus of himself: " Meanwhile 
the Cardinal Ippolito, in whom all my best hopes 
were placed, being dead, I began to understand that 
the promises of this world are, for the most part, 
vain phantoms, and that to confide in one's self, and 
become something of worth and value, is the best 
and safest course." Now, though I am by no 
means sure that the reader will assent to all my 
propositions, yet I think we shall agree in my first 
rule for success, — that we shall drop the brag and 
the advertisement, and take Michel Angelo's course, 
" to confide in one's self, and be something of worth 
and value." 

Each man has an aptitude born with him to do 
easily some feat impossible to any other. Do your 
work. I have to say this often, but nature says it 
oftener. 'T is clownish to insist on doing all with 
one's own hands, as if every man should build his 
own clumsy house, forge his hammer, and bake his 
dough ; but he is to dare to do what he can do best ; 
not help others as they would direct him, but as he 
knows his helpful power to be. To do otherwise is 
to neutralize all those extraordinary special talents 
distributed among men. Yet, whilst this self-truth 
is essential to the exhibition of the world and to the 
growth and glory of each mind, it is rare to find a 
man who believes his own thought or who speaks 
that which he was created to say. As nothing 



SUCCESS. 261. 

astonishes men so much as common sense and plain- 
deahng, so nothing is more rare in any man than 
an act of his own. Any work looks wonderful to 
him, except that which he can do. We do not be- 
lieve our own thought ; we must serve somebody ; 
we must quote somebody ; we dote on the old and 
the distant ; we are tickled by great names ; we im- 
port the religion of other nations ; we quote their 
opinions ; we cite their laws. The gravest and 
learnedest courts in this country shudder to face a 
new question, and will wait months and years for a 
case to occur that can be tortured into a precedent, 
and thus throw on a bolder party the onus of an 
initiative. Thus we do not carry a counsel in 
our breasts, or do not know it ; and because we 
cannot shake off from our shoes this dust of Eu- 
rope and Asia, the world seems to be born old, 
society is under a spell, every man is a borrower 
and a mimic, life is theatrical, and literature a 
quotation ; and hence that depression of spirits, 
that furrow of care, said to mark every American 
brow. 

Self-trust is the first secret of success, the be- 
lief that, if you are here, the authorities of the 
universe put you here, and for cause, or with some 
task strictly appointed you in your constitution, and 
so long as you work at that you are well and suc- 
cessful. It by no means consists in rushing prema- 
turely to a showy feat that shall catch the eye and 



262 SUCCESS. 

satisfy spectators. It is enough if you work in the 
right direction. So far from the performance heing 
the real success, it is clear that the success was 
much earlier than that, namely, when all the feats 
that make our civihty were the thoughts of good 
heads. The fame of each discovery rightly attaches 
to the mind that made the formula which contains 
all the details, and not to the manufacturers who 
now make their gain by it ; although the mob uni- 
formly cheers the publisher, and not the inventor. 
It is the dulness of the multitude that they cannot 
see the house, in the ground- plan ; the working, 
in the model of the projector. Whilst it is a 
thought, though it were a new fuel, or a new food, 
or the creation of agriculture, it is cried down ; it 
is a chimera : but when it is a fact, and comes in 
the shape of eight per. cent, ten per cent, a hun- 
dred per cent, they cry, ' It is the voice of God.' 
Horatio Greenough, the sculptor, said to me of 
Robert Fulton's visit to Paris : " Fulton knocked at 
the door of Napoleon with steam, and was rejected ; 
and Napoleon lived long enough to know that he 
had excluded a greater power than his own." 

Is there no loving of knowledge, and of art, and 
of our design, for itself alone ? Cannot we please 
ourselves with performing our work, or gaining truth 
and power, without being praised for it ? I gain my 
point, I gain all points, if I can reach my companion 
with any statement which teaches him his own worth. 



SUCCESS. 263 

The sum of wisdom is, that the time is never lost 
that is devoted to work. The good workman never 
says, ' There, that will do ' ; but, ' There, that is it : 
try it, and come again, it will last always.' If 
the artist, in whatever art, is well at work on his 
own design, it signifies little that he does not yet 
find orders or customers. I pronounce that young 
man happy who is content with having acquired the 
skill which he had aimed at, and waits willingly 
when the occasion of making it appreciated shall 
arrive, knowing well that it will not loiter. The 
time your rival spends in dressing up his work for 
effect, hastily, and for the market, you spend in 
study and experiments towards real knowledge 
and efficiency. He has thereby sold his picture 
or machine, or won the prize, or got the appoint- 
ment ; but you have raised yourself into a higher 
school of art, and a few years will show the advan- 
tage of the real master over the short popularity of 
the showman. I know it is a nice point to discrimi- 
nate this self-trust, which is the pledge of all mental 
vigor and performance, from the disease to which it 
is allied, — the exaggeration of the part which we 
can play ; — yet they are two things. But it is 
sanity to know, that, over my talent or knack, and 
a million times better than any talent, is the central 
intelligence which subordinates and uses all talents ; 
and it is only as a door into this, that any talent or 
the knowledge it gives is of value. He only who 



264 SUCCESS. 

comes into this central intelligence, in wliich no 
egotism or exaggeration can be, comes into self- 
possession. 

My next point is that, in the scale of powers, it 
is not talent, but sensibility, which is best : talent 
confines, but the central life puts us in relation to 
all. How often it seems the chief good to be born 
wdth a cheerful temper, and well adjusted to the 
tone of the human race. Such a man feels him- 
self in harmony, and conscious by his receptivity 
of an infinite strength. Like Alfred, " good fortune 
accompanies him like a gift of God." Feel your- 
self, and be not daunted by things. 'T is the ful- 
ness of man that runs over into objects, and makes 
his Bibles and Shakspeares and Homers so great. 
The joyful reader borrows of his own ideas to fill 
their faulty outline, and knows not that he borrows 
and gives. 

There is something of poverty in our criticism. 
We assume that there are few great men, all the 
rest are little ; that there is but one Homer, but 
one Shakspeare, one Newton, one Socrates. But 
the soul in her beaming hour does not acknowl- 
edge these usurpations. We should know how to 
praise Socrates, or Plato, or Saint John, without 
impoverishing us. In good hours we do not find 
Shakspeare or Homer over-great, — only to have 
been translators of the happy present, — and every 
man and woman divine possibilities. 'T is the good 



SUCCESS. 265 

reader that makes the good book ; a good head can* 
not read amiss : in every book he finds passages 
which seem confidences or asides hidden from all 
else and unmistakably meant for his ear. 

The light by which we see in this world comes out 
from the soul of the observer. Wherever any no- 
ble sentiment dwelt, it made the faces and houses 
around to shine. Nay, the powers of this busy brain 
are miraculous and illimitable. Therein are the 
rules and formulas by which the whole empire of 
matter is worked There is no prosperity, trade, 
art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but 
if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a 
thought of some individual man. 

Is all life a surface affair ? 'T is curious, but our 
difference of wit appears to be only a difference 
of impressionability, or power to appreciate faint, 
fainter, and infinitely faintest voices and visions. 
When the scholar or the writer has pumped his 
brain for thoughts and verses, and then comes abroad 
into Nature, has he never found that there is a 
better poetry hinted "in a boy's whistle of a tune, or 
in the piping of a sparrow, than in all his literary 
results ? We call it health. What is so admirable as 
the health of youth? — with his long days because his 
eyes are good, and brisk circulations keep him warm 
in cold rooms, and he loves books that speak to the 
imagination ; and he can read Plato, covered to his 
chin with a cloak in a cold upper chamber, though 



266 SUCCESS. 

he should associate the Dialogues ever after with a 
woollen smell. 'T is the bane of life that natural 
effects are cpntinually crowded out, and artificial ar- 
rancrements substituted. We remember when, in 
early youth, the earth spoke and the heavens glowed ; 
when an evening, any evening, grim and wintry, 
sleet and snow, was enough for us ; the houses 
were in the air. Now it costs a rare combination 
of clouds and lights to overcome the common and 
mean. What is it we look for in the landscape, in 
sunsets and sunrises, in the sea and the firmament ? 
what but a compensation for the cramp and petti- 
ness of human performances ? We bask in the day, 
and the mind finds somewhat as great as itself. In 
Nature, all is large, massive repose. Remember 
what befalls a city boy who goes for the first time 
into the October woods. He is suddenly initiated 
into a pomp and glory that brings to pass for him the 
dreams of romance. He is the king he dreamed 
he was ; he walks through tents of gold, through 
bowers of crimson, porphyry, and topaz, pavilion 
on pavilion, garlanded with vines, flowers, and sun- 
beams, with incense and music, with so many hints 
to his astonished senses ; the leaves twinkle and 
pique and flatter him, and his eye and step are 
tempted on by what hazy distances to happier soli- 
tudes. All this happiness he owes only to his finer 
perception. The owner of the wood-lot finds only a 
number of discolored trees, and says, ' They ought 



SUCCESS. 267 

to come down ; they are n't growing any better ; 

tliey should be cut and corded before spring.' 

Wordsworth writes of the delights of the boy in 

Nature : — 

" For never will come back the hour 
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower." 

But I have just seen a man, well knowing what he 
spoke of, who told me. that the verse was not true 
for him ; that his eyes opened as he grew older, and 
that every spring was more beautiful to him than 
the last. 

We live among gods of our own creation. Does 
that deep-toned bell, which has shortened many a 
night of ill nerves, render to you nothing but acous- 
tic vibrations ? Is the old church, which gave you 
the first lessons of religious life, or the village school, 
or the college where you first knew the dreams 
of fancy and joys of thought, only boards or brick 
and mortar ? Is the house in which you were born, 
or the house in which your dearest friend lived, only 
a piece of real estate whose value is covered by the 
Hartford msurance ? You walk on the beach and 
enjoy the animation of the picture. Scoop up a 
little water in the hollow of your palm, take up a 
handful of shore sand ; well, these are the elements. 
What is the beach but acres of sand ? what is the 
ocean but cubic miles of water ? a little more or 
less sicrnifies nothino;. No, it is that this brute mat- 
ter is part of somewhat not brute. • It is that the 



268 SUCCESS. 

sand floor is held by spheral gravity, and bent to be 
a part of the round globe, under the optical sky, — 
part of the astonishing astronomy, and existing, at 
last, to moral ends and from moral causes. 

The world is not made up to the eye of fig- 
ures, that is, only half; it is also made of color. 
How that element washes the universe with its 
enchanting waves ! The sculptor had ended his 
work, and behold a new world of dream-like glory. 
'T is the last stroke of Nature ; beyond color she 
cannot go. In like manner, life is made up, not of 
knowledge only, but of love also. If thought is 
form, sentiment is color. It clothes the skeleton 
world with space, variety, and glow. The hues of 
sunset make life great ; so the affections make some 
little web of cottage and fireside populous, impor- 
tant, and filling the main space in our history. 

The fundamental fact In our metaphysic constitu- 
tion is the correspondence of man to the world, so 
that every change in that writes a record in the 
mind. The mind yields sympathetically to the 
tendencies or law which stream through things, and 
make the order of nature ; and in the perfection 
of this correspondence or expressiveness, the health 
and force of man consist. If we follow this hint 
into our intellectual education, we shall find that it 
is not propositions, not new dogmas and a logical 
exposition of the world, that are our first need ; 
but to watch and tenderly cherish the intellectual 



SUCCESS. 269 

and moral sensibilities, those fountains of right 
thought, and woo them to stay and make their 
home with us. Whilst they abide with us, we shall 
not think amiss. Our perception far outruns our 
talent. We bring a welcome to the highest lessons 
of religion and of poetry out of all proportion be- 
yond our skill to teach. And, further, the great 
hearing and sympathy of men I's more true and wise 
than their speaking is wont to be. A deep sym- 
pathy is what we require for any student of the 
mind ; for the chief difference between man and 
man is a difference of impressionabihty. Aristotle, 
or Bacon, or Kant propound some maxim which is 
the key-note of philosophy thenceforward. But I 
am more interested to know, that, when at last they 
have hurled out their grand word, it is only some 
familiar experience of every man in the street. If 
it be not, it will never be heard of again. 

Ah ! if one could keep this sensibility, and live in 
the happy sufficing present, and find the day and 
its cheap means contenting, which only ask recep- 
tivity in you, and no strained exertion and canker- 
ing ambition, overstimulating to be at the head of 
your class and the head of society, and to have 
distinction and laurels and consumption ! We are 
not strong by our power to penetrate, but by our 
relatedness. The world is enlarged for us, not by 
new objects, but by finding more affinities and po- 
tencies in those we have. 



270 SUCCESS. 

This sensibility appears in the homage to beauty 
which exalts the faculties of youth, in the power 
which form and color exert upon the soul ; Avhen 
we see eyes that are a compliment to the human 
race, features that explain the Phidian sculpture. 
Fontenelle said : " There are three things about 
which I have curiosity, though I know nothing of 
them, — music, poetry, and love." The great doc- 
tors of this science are the greatest men, — Dante, 
Petrarch, Michel Angelo, and Shakspeare. The 
wise Socrates treats this matter with a certain arch- 
ness, yet with very marked expressions. "I am 
always," he says, " asserting that I happen to know, 
I may say, nothing but a mere trifle relating to 
matters of love ; yet in that kind of learning I lay 
claim to being more skilled than any one man of 
the past or present time." They may well speak 
in this uncertain manner of their knowledge, and 
in this confident manner of their will, for the secret 
of it is hard to detect, so deep it is ; and yet genius 
is measured by its skill in this science. 

Who is he in youth, or in maturity, or even in 
old age, who does not like to hear of those sensi- 
bilities which turn curled heads round at church, 
and send wonderful eye-beams across assemblies, 
from one to one, never missing in the thickest 
crowd. The keen statist reckons by tens and hun- 
dreds ; the genial man is interested in every slipper 
that comes into the assembly. The passion, aKke 



SUCCESS. 271 

everywhere, creeps under the snows of Scandinavia, 
under the fires of the equator, and swims in the 
seas of Polynesia. Lofn is as puissant a divinity in 
the Norse Edda as Camadeva in the red vault of 
India, Eros in the Greek, or Cupid in the Latin 
heaven. And what is specially true of love is, that 
it is a state of extreme impressionability ; the lover 
has more senses and finer senses than others ; his 
eye and ear are telegraphs ; he reads omens on the 
flower, and cloud, and face, and form, and gesture, 
and reads them aright. In his surprise at the sud- 
den and entire understanding that is between him 
and the beloved person, it occurs to him that they 
might somehow meet independently of time and 
place. How delicious the belief that he could elude 
all guards, precautions, ceremonies, means, and de- 
lays, and hold instant and sempiternal communica- 
tion ! In solitude, in banishment, the hope returned, 
and the experiment was eagerly tried. The supernal 
powers seem to take his part. What was on his 
lips to say is uttered by his friend. When he went 
abroad, he met, by wonderful casualties, the one 
person he sought. If in his walk he chanced to 
look back, his friend was walking behind him. And 
it has happened that the artist has often drawn in 
his pictures the face of the future wife whom he 
had not yet seen. 

But also in complacences, nowise so strict as this 
of the passion, the man of sensibility counts it a 



272 SUCCESS. 

delight only to hear a child's voice fully addressed 
to him, or to see the beautiful manners of the 
youth of either sex. When the event is past and 
remote, how insignificant the greatest compared 
with the piquancy of the present ! To-day at tlie 
school examination the professor interrogates Syl~ 
vina in the history class about Odoacer and Alaric. 
Sylvina can't remember, but suggests that Odoacer 
was defeated; and the professor tartly replies, "No, 
he defeated the Romans." But 't is plain to tlie 
visitor, that 't is of no importance at all about Odo- 
acer, and 't is a great deal of importance about 
Sylvina ; and if she says he was defeated, wliy he 
had better, a great deal, have been defeated, than 
give her a moment's annoy. Odoacer, if there was 
a particle of the gentleman in him, would have said, 
Let me be defeated a thousand times. 

And as our tenderness for youth and beauty gives 
a new and just importance to their fresh and mani- 
fold claims, so the like sensibility gives welcome to 
all excellence, has eyes and hospitality for merit in 
corners. An Englishman of marked character and 
talent, who had brought with him hither one or two 
friends and a library of mystics, assured me that 
nobody and nothing of possible interest was left in 
England, — he had brought all that was alive away. 
I was forced to reply : " No, next door to you, prob- 
ably, on the other side of the partition in the same 
house, was a greater man than any you had seen." 



SUCCESS. 273 

Every man has a history worth knowing, if he 
could tell it, or if we could draw it from him. 
Character and wit have their own magnetism. 
Send a deep man into any town, and he will find 
another deep man there, unknown hitherto to his 
neighbors. That is the great happiness of life, — 
to add to our high acquaintances. The very law 
of averages might have assured you that there will 
be in every hundred heads, say ten or five good 
heads. Morals are generated as the atmosphere is. 
'Tis a secret, the genesis of either; but the sprino-s 
of justice and courage do not fail any more than 
salt or sulphur springs. 

The world is always opulent, the oracles are 
never silent; but the receiver must by a happy 
temperance be brought to that top of condition, that 
frolic health, that he can easily take and give these 
fine communications. Health is the condition of 
wisdom, and the sign is cheerfulness, — an open 
and noble temper. There was never poet who had 
not the heart in the right place. The old trouveur. 
Pons Capdueil, wTote, — 

" Oft have I heard, and deem the witness true, 
Whom man delights in, God delights in too." 

All beauty warms the heart, is a sign of health, 
prosperity, and the favor of God. Everything 
lasting and fit for men, the Divine Power has 
marked with this stamp. What delights, what 
emancipates, not what scares and pains us, is wdse 



274 SUCCESS. 

and good in speech and in the arts. For, truly, the 
heart at the centre of the universe with every 
throb hurls the flood of happiness into every artery, 
vein, and veinlet, so that the whole system is inun- 
dated witl; the tides of joy. The plenty of the 
poorest place is too great; the harvest cannot be 
gathered. Every sound ends in music. The edge 
of every surface is tinged with prismatic rays. 

One more trait of true success. The good mind 
chooses what is positive, what is advancing, — em- 
braces the affirmative. Our system is one of pov- 
erty. 'Tis presumed, as I said, there is but one 
Shakspeare, one Homer, one Jesus, — not that all 
are or shall be inspired. But we must begin by af- 
firming. Truth and goodness subsist forevermore. 
It is true there is evil and good, night and day : 
but these are not equal. The day is great and final. 
The night is for the day, but the day is not for the 
night. What is this immortal demand for more, 
which belongs to our constitution ? this enormous 
ideal ? There is no such critic and beggar as this 
terrible Soul. No historical person begins to content 
us. We know the satisfactoriness of justice, the 
sufficiency of truth. We know the answer that 
leaves nothing to ask. We know the Spirit by its 
victorious tone. The searching tests to apply to 
every new pretender are amount and quality, — 
what does he add ? and what is the state of mind 
he leaves me in ? Your theory is unimportant ; but 



SUCCESS. 275 

what new stock you can add to humanity, or how 
high you can carry Hfe ? A man ' is a man only as 
he makes hfe and nature happier to us. 

I fear the popular notion of success stands in di- 
rect opposition in all points to the real and whole- 
some success. One adores public opinion, the other 
private opinion ; one fame, the other desert ; 
one feats, the other humihty ; one lucre, the other 
love ; one monopoly, and the other hospitality of 
mind. 

We may apply this affirmative law to letters, to 
manners, to art, to the decorations of our houses, 
etc. I do not find executions or tortures or lazar- 
houses, or grisly photographs of the field on the day 
after the battle fit subjects for cabinet pictures. I 
think that some so-called " sacred subjects " must be 
treated with more genius than I have seen in the 
masters of Italian or Spanish art to be right pictures 
for houses and churches. Nature does not invite 
such exhibition. Nature lays the ground-plan of 
each creature accurately, — ^ sternly fit for all his 
functions ; then veils it scrupulously. See how care- 
fully she covers up the skeleton. The eye shall not 
see it : the sun shall not shine on it. She weaves 
her tissues and integuments of flesh and skin and 
hair and beautiful colors of the day over it, and 
forces death down underground, and makes haste to 
cover it up with leaves and vines, and wipes care- 
fully out every trace by new creation. Who and 



276 SUCCESS. 

what are you that would lay the ghastly anatomy 
bare ? 

Don't hang a dismal picture on the wall, and do 
not daub with sables and glooms in your conversa- 
tion. Don't be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. 
Don't bewail and bemoan. Omit the negative 
propositions. Nerve us with incessant affirmatives. 
Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against 
the bad, but chant the beauty of the good. When 
that is spoken which has a right to be spoken, 
the chatter and the criticism will stop. Set down 
nothing that will not help somebody; 

" For every gift of noble origin 
Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath." 

The affirmative of affirmatives is love. As much 
love, so much perception. As caloric to matter, so 
is love to mind ; so it enlarges, and so it empowers 
it. Good-will makes insight, as one finds his way 
to the sea by embarking on a river. I have seen 
scores of people who can silence me, but I seek one 
who shall make me forcj-et or overcome the frio;idi- 
ties and imbecilities into which I fall. The painter 
Giotto, Yasari tells us, renewed art, because he put 
more goodness into his heads. To awake in man 
and to raise the sense of worth, to educate his feel- 
ing and judgment so that he shall scorn himself for 
a bad action, that is the only aim. 

'T is cheap and easy to destroy. There is not 
a joyful boy or an innocent girl buoyant with 



SUCCESS. 277 

fine purposes of duty, in all the street full of eager 
and rosy faces, but a cynic can chill and dis- 
hearten with a single word. Despondency comes 
readily enough to the most sanguine. The cynic 
lias only to follow their hint with his bitter con- 
firmation, and they check that eager courageous 
pace and go home with heavier step and pre- 
mature age. They will themselves quickly enough 
give the hint he wants to the cold wretch. Which 
of them has not failed to please where they most 
wished it? or blundered where they were most 
ambitious of success ? or found themselves awk- 
ward or tedious or incapable of study, thouglit, or 
heroism, and only hoped by good sense and fidelity 
to do what they could and pass unblamed ? And 
this witty malefactor makes their little hope less 
with satire and scepticism, and slackens the springs 
of endeavor. Yes, this is easy; but to help the 
young soul, add energy, inspire hope, and blow the 
coals into a useful flame ; to redeem defeat by new 
thought, by firm action, that is not easy, that is 
the work of divine men. 

We live on different planes or platforms. There 
is an external life, which is educated at school, 
taught to read, write, cipher, and trade ; taught to 
grasp all the boy can get, urging him to put him- 
self forward, to make himself useful and acrreeable 
in the world, to ride, run, argue, and contend, un- 
fold his talents, shine, conquer, and possess. 



278 SUCCESS. 

But the inner life sits at home, and does not learn 
to do things, nor value these feats at all. 'T is a 
quiet, wise perception. It loves truth, because it is 
itself real ; it loves right, it knows nothing else ; 
but it makes no progress ; was as wise in our first 
memory of it as now ; is just the same now in 
maturity and hereafter in age, it was in youth. 
We have grown to manhood and womanhood ; 
we have powers, connection, children, reputa- 
tions, professions : this makes no account of them 
all. It lives in the great present; it makes the 
present great. This tranquil, well-founded, wide- 
seeing soul is no express-rider, no attorney, no mag- 
istrate : it lies in the sun, and broods on the world. 
A person of this temper once said to a man of much 
activity, " I will pardon you that you do so much, 
and you me that I do nothing." And Euripides 
says that "Zeus hates busybodies and those who 
do too much." 



OLD AGE. 



OLD AGE. 

On the anniversary of the Phi Beta Kappa So- 
ciety at Cambridge, in 1861, the venerable Presi- 
dent Quincy, senior member of the Society, as vy^ell 
as senior alumnus of the University, v^as received 
at the dinner with pecuhar demonstrations of re- 
spect. He rephed to these comphments in a speech, 
and, gracefully claiming the privileges of a literary 
society, entered at some length into an Apology for 
Old Age, and, aiding himself by notes in his hand, 
made a sort of running commentary on Cicero's 
chapter " De Senectute." The character of the 
speaker, the transparent good faith of his praise and 
blame, and the naivete of his eager preference of 
Cicero's opinions to King David's, gave unusual in- 
terest to the College festival. It was a discourse 
full of dignity, honoring him who spoke and those 
who heard. 

The speech led me to look over at home — an 
easy task — Cicero's famous essay, charming by its 
uniform rhetorical merit ; heroic with Stoical pre- 
cepts ; with a Roman eye to the claims of the State ; 
happiest, perhaps, in his praise of life on the farm ; 



282 OLD AGE. 

and rising at the conclusion to a lofty strain. But 
he does not exhaust the subject ; rather invites the 
attempt to add traits to the picture from our broader 
modern life. 

Cicero makes no reference to the illusions which 
cling to the element of time, and in which Nature 
delights. Wellington, in speaking of military men, 
said, " What masks are these uniforms to hide 
cowards ! " I have often detected the like decep- 
tion in the cloth shoe, wadded pelisse, wig, spec- 
tacles, and padded chair of Age. Nature lends 
herself to these illusions, and adds dim sight, deaf- 
ness, cracked voice, snowy hair, short memory and 
sleep. These also are masks, and all is not Age 
that wears them. Whilst we yet call ourselves 
young, and our mates are yet youths with even 
boyish remains, one good fellow in the set prema- 
turely sports a gray or a bald head, which does not 
impose on us who know how innocent of sanctity 
or of Platonism he is, but does deceive his juniors 
and the' public, who presently distinguish him with 
a most amusing respect : and this lets us into the 
secret, that the venerable forms that so awed our 
childhood were just such impostors. Nature is full 
of freaks, and now puts an old head on young 
shoulders, and then a young heart beating under 
fourscore winters. 

For if the essence of age is not present, these 
signs, whether of Art or Nature, are counterfeit 



OLD AGE. 283 

and ridiculous : and the essence of age Is intellect. 
Wherever that appears, we call it old. If we look 
into the eyes of the youngest person, we sometimes 
discover that here is one who knows already what 
you would go about with much pains to teach him ; 
there is that in him which is the ancestor of all 
around him : which fact the Indian Vedas express 
when they say, " He that can discriminate is the 
father of his father." And in our old British 
legends of Arthur and the Round Table, his friend 
and counsellor, Merlin the Wise, is a babe found ex- 
posed in a basket by the river-side, and, though an 
infant of only a few days, speaks articulately to 
those who discover him, tells his name and history, 
and presently foretells the fate of the by-standers. 
Wherever there is power, there is age. Don't be 
deceived by dimples and curls. I tell you that 
babe is a thousand yeare old. 

Time is, indeed, the theatre and seat of illu- 
sion : nothinp; is so ductile and elastic. The mind 
stretches an hour to a century, and dwarfs an 
age to an hour. Saadi found in a mosque at 
Damascus an old Persian of a hundred and fifty 
years who was dying, and was saying to himself, 
" I said, coming into the world by birth, ' I will en- 
joy myself for a few moments.' Alas ! at the va- 
riegated table of life I partook of a few mouthfuls, 
and the Fates said, ' Enough!'''^ That which does 
not decay is so central and controlling in us, that, a» 



284 OLD AGE. 

long as one is alone by himself, he is not sensible of 
the inroads of time, which always begin at the sur- 
face-edges. If, on a winter day, you should stand 
within a bell-glass, the face and color of the after- 
noon clouds would not indicate whether it w^ere 
June or January ; and if we did not find the reflec- 
tion of ourselves in the eyes of the young people, we 
could not know that the century-clock had struck 
seventy instead of twenty. How many men habit- 
ually believe that each chance passenger with whom 
they converse is of their own age, and presently 
find it was his father, and not his brother, whom 
they knew ! 

But not to press too hard on these deceits and 
illusions of Nature, which are inseparable from our 
condition, and looking at age under an aspect more 
conformed to the common sense, if the question be 
the felicity of age, I fear the first popular judgments 
will be unfavorable. From the point of sensuous 
experience, seen from the streets and markets and 
the haunts of pleasure and gain, the estimate of age 
is low, melancholy, and sceptical. Frankly face 
the facts, and see the result. Tobacco, coffee, alco- 
hol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilu- 
tions : the surest poison is time. This cup, which 
Nature puts to our lips, has a wonderful virtue, sur- 
passing that of any other draught. It opens the 
senses, adds power, fills us with exalted dreams, which 
we call hope, love, ambition, science : especially, it 



OLD AGE. 285 

creates a craving for larger draughts of itself. But 
they who take the larger draughts are drunk with it, 
lose their stature, strength, beauty, and senses, and 
end in folly and delirium. We postpone our literary 
work until we have more ripeness and skill to write,. 
and we one day discover that our literary talent was 
a youthful effervescence which we have now lost. 
We had a judge in Massachusetts who at sixty pro- 
posed to resign, alleging that he perceived a certain, 
decay in his faculties ; he was dissuaded by his 
friends, on account of the public convenience at 
that time. At seventy it was hinted to him that it 
was time to retire ; but he now replied, that he 
thought his judgment as robust, and all his faculties 
as good as ever they were. But besides the self- 
deception, the strong and hasty laborers of the street 
do not work well with the chronic valetudinarian. 
Youth is everywhere in place. Age, like woman, 
requires fit surroundings. Age is comely in coaches, 
in churches, in chairs of state, and ceremony, in 
council-chambers, in courts of justice, and histori- 
cal societies. Age is becoming in the country. 
But in the rush and uproar of Broadway, if you 
look into tlie faces of the passengers, there is dejec- 
tion or indignation in the seniors, a certain con- 
cealed sense of injury, and the lip made up with 
a heroic determination not to mind it. Few envy 
the consideration enjoyed by the oldest inhabitant. 
We do not count a man's years, until he has noth- 



286 OLD AGE. 

m^ else to count. The vast inconvenience of ani- 
mal immortality was told in the fable of Tithonus. 
In short, the creed of the street is, Old Age is not 
disgraceful, but immensely disadvantageous. Life 
is well enough, but we shall all be glad to get out of 
it, and they will all be glad to have us. 

This is odious on the face of it. Universal con- 
victions are not to be shaken by the whimseys of 
overfed butchers and. firemen, or by the sentimental 
fears of girls who would keep the infantile bloom on 
their cheeks. We know the value of experience. 
Life and art are cumulative ; and he who has ac- 
complished something in any department alone de- 
serves to be heard on that subject. A man of great 
employments and excellent performance used to 
assure me that he did not think a man worth any- 
thing until he was sixty ; although this smacks a 
little of the resolution of a certain " Young Men's 
Republican Club," that all men should be held 
eligible who were under seventy. But in all govern- 
ments, the councils of power were held by the old ; 
and patricians or p«fres, senate or senes, seigneurs or 
seniors, geroiisia^ the senate of Sparta, the presby- 
tery of the Church, and the like, all signify simply 
old men. 

The cynical creed or lampoon of the market 
is refuted by the universal prayer for long life, 
which is the verdict of Nature, and justified by 
all history. We have, it is true, examples of an 



OLD AGE. 287 

accelerated pace by which young men achieved 
grand works ; as in the Macedonian Alexander, in 
RafFaelle, Shakspeare, Pascal, Burns, and Bj^ron; 
but these are rare exceptions. Nature, in the main, 
vindicates her law. Skill to do comes of doing ; 
knowledge comes by eyes always open, and work- 
ing hands; and there is no knowledge that is 
not power. Beranger said, " Almost all the good 
workmen live long." And if the life be true and 
noble, we have quite another sort of seniors than 
the frowzy, timorous, peevish dotards who are false- 
ly old, — namely, the men who fear no city, but by 
whom cities stand ; who appearing in any street, the 
people empty their houses to gaze at and obey them : 
as at " My Cid, with the fleecy beard," in Toledo ; 
or Bruce, as Barbour report&^iiim ; as blind old Dan- 
dolo, elected Doge at eighty-four years, storming 
Constantinople at ninety-four, and after the revolt 
again victorious, and elected at the age of ninety-six 
to the throne of the Eastern Empire, which he de- 
clined, and died Doge at ninety-seven. We still 
feel the force of Socrates, " whom well-advised the 
oracle pronounced wisest of men " ; of Archime- 
des, holding Syracuse against the Romans by his 
wit, and himself better than all their nation; of 
Michel Angelo, wearing the four crowns of archi- 
tecture, sculpture, painting, and poetry ; of Galileo, 
of whose blindness Castelli said, " The noblest eye 
is darkened that Nature ever made, — an eye that 



288 OLD AGE. 

hath seen more than all that went before him, and 
hath opened the eyes of all that shall come after 
him " ; of Newton, who made an important dis- 
covery for every one of his eighty-five years ; of 
Bacon, who " took all knowledge to be his prov- 
ince " ; of Fontenelle, " that precious porcelain vase 
laid up in the centre of France to be guarded with 
the utmost care for a hundred years" ; of Franklin, 
Jefferson, and Adams, the wise and heroic states- 
men ; of Washington, the perfect citizen ; of Wel- 
lington, the perfect soldier ; of Goethe, the all- 
knowing poet; of Humboldt, the encyclopaedia of 
science. 

Under the general assertion of the well-being of 
age, we can easily count particular benefits of that 
condition. It has weathered the perilous capes and 
shoals in the sea whereon we sail, and the chief evil 
of life is taken away in removing the grounds of 
fear. The insurance of a ship expires as she en- 
ters the harbor at home. It were strange, if a man 
should turn his sixtieth year without a feeling of 
immense relief from the number of dangers he has 
escaped. When the old wife says, ' Take care of 
that tumor in your shoulder, perhaps it is cancer- 
ous,' — he replies, ' I am yielding to a surer decom- 
position.' The humorous thief who drank a pot 
of beer at the gallows blew off the froth because 
he had heard it was unhealthy ; but it will not add 
a pang to the prisoner marched out to be shot, to 



OLD AGE. 289 

assure him that the pain in his knee threatens mor- 
tification. When the pleuro-pneumonia of the cows 
raged, the butchers said, that, though the acute 
degree was novel, there never was a time when 
this disease did not occur among cattle. All men 
carry seeds of all distempers through life latent, 
and we die without developing them ; such is the 
affirmative force of the constitution ; but if you are 
enfeebled by any cause, some of these sleeping 
seeds start and open. Meantime, at every stage we 
lose a foe. At fifty years, 'tis said, afflicted citizens 
lose their sick-headaches. I hope this hegira is not 
as movable a feast as that one I annually look for, 
when the horticulturists assure me that the rose- 
bugs in our gardens disappear on the tenth of July ; 
they stay a fortnight later in mine. But be it as " 
it may with the sick-headache, — 't is certain that 
graver headaches and heart-aches are lulled once 
for all, as we come up with certain goals of time. 
The passions have answered their purpose : that 
slight but dread overweight, with which, in each 
instance. Nature secures the execution of her aim,, 
drops off. To keep man in the planet, she im- 
presses the terror of death. To perfect the com- 
missariat, she implants in each a certain rapacity to 
get the supply, and a httle oversupply, of his wants. 
To insure the existence of the race, she reinforces 
the sexual instinct, at the risk of disorder, grief, and 
pain. To secure strength, she plants cruel hunger 



290 OLD AGE. 

and thirst, which so easily overdo their office, and 
invite disease. But these temporary stays and 
shifts for the protection of the young animal are 
shed as fast as they can be replaced by nobler re- 
sources. We live in youth amidst this rabble of 
passions, quite too tender, quite too hungry and 
irritable. Later, the interiors of mind and heart 
open, and supply grandei' motives. We learn the 
fatal compensations that wait on every act. Then, 
— one after another, — this riotous time-destroying 
crew disappear. 

I count it another capital advantage of age, this, 
that a success more or less signifies. nothing. Little 
by little, it has amassed such a fund of merit, that 
it can very well afford to go on its credit when it 
will. When I chanced to meet the poet Words- 
worth, then sixty-three years old, he told me, " that 
he had just had a fall and lost a tooth, and, when 
his companions were much concerned for the mis- 
chance, he had replied, that he was glad it had not 
happened forty years before." Well, Nature takes 
care that we shall not lose our organs forty years 
too soon. A lawyer argued a cause yesterday in 
the Supreme Court, and I was struck with a certain 
air of levity and defiance which vastly became him. 
Thirty years ago it was a serious concern to him 
whether his pleading was good and effective. Now 
it is of importance to his client, but of none to 
himself. It has been long already fixed what he 



OLD AGE. 291 

can do and cannot do, and his reputation does not 
gain or suffer from one or a dozen new performances. 
If lie should, on a new occasion, rise quite beyond 
his mark, and achieve somewhat great and extraor- 
dinary, that, of course, would instantly tell ; but he 
may go below his mark with impunity, and people 
will say, ' O, he had headache,' or, ' He lost his 
sleep for two nights.' What a lust of appearance, 
what a load of anxieties that once degraded him, he 
is thus rid of! Every one is sensible of this cumu- 
lative advantage in living. All the good days be- 
hind him are sponsors, who speak for him when he 
is silent, pay for him when he has no money, intro- 
duce him where he has no letters, and work for him 
when he sleeps. 

A third felicity of age is, that it has found ex- 
pression. The youth suffers not only from ungrati- 
fied desires, but from powers untried, and from a pic- 
ture in his mind of a career which lias, as yet, no 
outward reality. He is tormented with the want 
of correspondence between things and thoughts. 
Michel Angelo's head is full of masculine and 
gigantic figures as gods walking, which make him 
savage until his furious chisel can render them 
into marble ; and of architectural dreams, until a 
hundred stone-masons can lay them in courses of 
travertine. There is the like tempest in every good 
head in which some great benefit for the world is 
planted. The throes continue until the child is 



292 OLD AGE. 

born. Every faculty new to each man thus goads 
him and drives him out into doleful deserts, until it 
finds proper vent. All the functions of human 
duty irritate and lash him forward, bemoaning and 
chiding, until they are performed. He wants 
friends, employment, knowledge, power, house and 
land, wife and children, honor and fame ; he has 
religious wants, aesthetic wants, domestic, civil, 
humane wants. One by one, day after day, he 
learns to coin his wishes into facts. He has his 
calling, homestead, social connection, and personal 
power, and thus, at the end of fifty years, his soul 
is appeased by seeing some sort of correspondence 
between his wish and his possession. This makes 
the value of age, the satisfaction it slowly offers to 
every craving. He is serene who does not feel 
himself pinched and wronged, but whose condition, 
in particular and in general, allows the utterance 
of his mind. In old persons, when thus fully ex- 
pressed, we often observe a fair, plump, perennial, 
waxen complexion, which indicates that all the fer- 
ment of earlier days has subsided into serenity of 
thought and behavior. 

The compensations of Nature play in age as in 
youth. In a world so charged and sparkling with 
power, a man does not live long and actively with- 
out costly additions of experience, which, though 
not spoken, are recorded in his mind. What to the 
youth is only a guess or a hope, is in the veteran a 



OLD AGE. 293 

digested statute. He beholds the feats of the 
juniors with complacency, but as one who, having 
long ago known these games, has refined them into 
results and morals. The Indian Red Jacket, when 
the young braves were boasting their deeds, said, 
" But the sixties have all the twenties and forties 
in them." 

For a fourth benefit, age sets its house in order, 
and finishes its works, which to every artist is a 
supreme pleasure. Youth has an excess of sensibil- 
ity, before which every object glitters and attracts. 
We leave one pursuit for another, and the young 
man's year is a heap of beginnings. At the end 
of a twelvemonth, he has nothing to show for it, — 
not one completed work. But the time is not lost. 
Our instincts drove us to hive innumerable experi- 
ences, that are yet of no visible value, and which 
we may keep for twice seven years before they 
shall be wanted. The best things are of secular 
growth. The instinct of classifying marks the wise 
and healthy mind. Linnseus projects his system, 
and lays out his twenty-four classes of plants, be- 
fore yet he has found in Nature a single plant to 
justify certain of his classes. His seventh class 
has not one. In process of time, he finds with de- 
light the little white TrientaUs, the only plant with 
seven petals and sometimes seven stamens, which 
constitutes a seventh class in conformity with his 
system. The conchologist builds his cabinet whilst 



294 OLD AGE. 

as yet he has few shells. He labels shelves for 
classes, cells for species : all but a few are empty. 
But every year fills some blanks, and with accelerat- 
ing speed as he becomes knowing and known. An 
old scholar finds keen delight in verifying the im- 
pressive anecdotes and citations he has met with 
in miscellaneous reading and hearing, in all the 
years of youth. We carry in memory important 
anecdotes, and have lost all clew to the author from 
whom we had them. We have a heroic speech 
from Rome or Greece, but cannot fix it on the man 
who said it. We have an admirable line worthy 
of Horace, ever and anon resounding in our mind's 
ear, but have searched all probable and improbable 
books for it in vain. We consult the reading men : 
but, strangely enough, they who know everything 
know not this. But especially we have a certain 
insulated thought, which haunts us, but remains in- 
sulated and barren. Well, there is nothing for all 
this but patience and time. Time, yes, that is the 
finder, the unweariable explorer, not subject to 
casualties, omniscient at last. The day comes 
when the hidden author of our story is found ; 
when the brave speech returns straight to the hero 
who said it ; when the admirable verse finds the 
poet to whom it belongs ; and best of all, when the 
lonely thought, which seemed so wise, yet half-wise, 
half-thought, because it cast no light abroad, is sud- 
denly matched in our mind by its twin, by its 



OLD AGE. 295 

sequence, or next related analogy, which gives it 
instantly radiating power, and justifies the super- 
stitious instinct with which we have hoarded it. We 
remember our old Greek Professor at Cambridge, 
an ancient bachelor, amid his folios, possessed by 
this hope of completing a task, with nothing to 
break his leisure after the three hours of his daily 
classes, yet ever restlessly stroking his leg, and as- 
suring himself " he should retire from the Univer- 
sity and read the authors." In Goethe's Romance, 
Makaria, the central figure for wisdom and influ- 
ence, pleases herself with withdrawing into soli- 
tude to astronomy and epistolary correspondence. 
Goethe himself carried this completion of studies 
to the highest point. Many of his works hung 
on the easel from youth to age, and received a 
stroke in every month or year. A hterary as- 
trologer, he never applied himself to any task but 
at the happy moment when all the stars consented. 
Bentley thought himself likely to live till fourscore, 
— long enough to read everything that was worth 
reading, — '^ Et tunc magna mei sub terris ibit 
imago.'" Much wider is spread the pleasure which 
old men take in completing their secular affairs, 
the inventor his inventions, the agriculturist his ex- 
periments, and all old men in finishing their houses, 
rounding their estates, clearing their titles, redu- 
cing tangled interests to order, reconciling enmities, 
and leaving all in the best posture for the future. 



296 OLD AGE. 

It must be believed that there is a proportion be- 
tween the designs of a man and the length of his 
life : there is a calendar of his years, so of his per- 
formances. 

America is the country of young men, and too 
full of work hitherto for leisure and tranquillity ; 
yet we have had robust centenarians, and examples 
of dignity and wisdom. I have lately found in an 
old note-book a record of a visit to ex-President 
John Adams, in 1825, soon after the election of his 
son to the Presidency. It is but a sketch, and 
nothing important passed in the conversation ; but 
it reports a moment in the life of a heroic person, 
who, in extreme old age, appeared still erect and 
worthy of his fame. 

^Feh., 1825. To-day, at Quincy, with 



my brother, by invitation of Mr. Adams's family. 
The old President sat in a large stuffed arm-chair, 
dressed in a blue coat, black small-clothes, white 
stockings ; a cotton cap covered his bald head. We 
made our compliment, told him he must let us join 
our congratulations to those of the nation on the 
happiness of his house. He thanked us, and said : 
" I am rejoiced, because the nation is happy. The 
time of gratulation and congratulations is nearly 
over with me : I am astonished that I have lived to 
see and know of this event. I have lived now 
nearly a century ; [he was ninety in the following 



OLD AGE. " 297 

October : ] a long, harassed, and distracted life." — I 
saidi *' The world thinks a good deal of joy has been 
mixed with it.'' — " The world does not know," he 
replied, " how much toil, anxiety, and sorrow I 
have suffered." — I asked if Mr. Adams's letter of 
acceptance had been read to him. — "Yes," he 
said, and, added, " My son has more political pru- 
dence than any man that I know who has existed in 
my time ; he never was put off his guard : and I 
hope he will continue such ; but what effect age may 
work in diminishing the power of his mind, I do 
not know ; it has been very much on the stretch, 
ever since he was born. He has always been la- 
borious, child and man, from infancy." — When 
Mr. J. Q. Adams's age was mentioned, he said, " He 
is now fifty-eight, or will be in Jul}^ " ; and re- 
marked that " all the Presidents were of the same 
age : General Washington was about fifty-eight, and 
I was about fifty-eight, and Mr. Jefferson, and 
Mr. Madison, and Mr. Monroe." — We inquired 
when he expected to see Mr. Adams. — He said : 
" Never : Mr. Adams will not come to Quincy 
but to my funeral. It would be a great satisfaction 
to me to see him, but I don't wish him to come on 
my account." — He spoke of Mr. Lechmere, whom 
he " well remembered to have seen come down 
daily, at a great age, to walk in the old town- 
house," — adding, " And I wish I could walk as 
well as he did. He was Collector of the Customs 



298 OLD AGE. 

for many years under the Royal Government." — 
E. said : " I suppose, sir, you would not have taken 
his place, even to walk as well as he." — " No," he 
replied, " that was not wdiat I wanted." — He 
talked of Whitefield, and " remembered when he 
w^as a Freshman in College, to have come into town 
to the Old South church, [I think,] to hear him, but 
could not get into the house ; — I however, saw 
him," he said, " through a window, and distinctly 
heard all. He had a voice such as I never heard 
before or since. He cast it out so that you might 
hear it at the meeting-house, [pointing towards the 
Quincy meeting-house,] and he had the grace of a 
dancing-master, of an actor of plays. His voice and 
manner helped him more than his sermons. I went 
with Jonathan Sewall." — " And you were pleased 
with him, sir?" — "Pleased! I was delighted be- 
yond measure." — We asked if at Whitefield's 
return the same popularity continued. — " Not the 
same fury," he said, " not the same wild enthusi- 
asm as before, but a greater esteeni, as he be- 
came more known. He did not terrify, but was 
admired." 

We spent about an hour in his room. He speaks 
very distinctly for so old a man, enters bravely into 
long sentences, which are interrupted by want of 
breath, but carries them invariably to a conclusion, 
without correcting a word. 

He spoke of the new novels of Cooper, and 



OLD AGE. 299 

" Peep at the Pilgrims," and " Saratoga," with 
praise, and named with accuracy the characters in 
them. He Hkes to have a person always reading to 
him, or company talking in his room, and is better 
the next day after having visitors in his chamber 
from morning to night. 

He received a premature report of his son's elec- 
tion, on Sunday afternoon, w^ithout any excitement, 
and told the reporter he had been hoaxed, for it 
was not yet time for any news to arrive. The 
informer, something damped in his heart, insisted 
on repairing to the meeting-house, and proclaimed 
it aloud to the congregation, who were so overjoyed 
that they rose in their seats and cheered thrice. 
The Reverend Mr. Whitney dismissed them imme- 
diately. 

When life has been well spent, age is a loss of 
what it can well spare, — muscular strength, organ- 
ic instincts, gross bulk, and works that belong to 
these. But the central wisdom, which was old in 
infancy, is young in fourscore years, and, dropping 
off obstructions, leaves in happy subjects the mind 
purified and wise. I have heard that whoever 
loves is in no condition old. I have heard, that, 
whenever the name of man is spoken, the doctrine 
of immortality is announced ; it cleaves to his con- 
stitution. The mode of it baffles our wit, and no 
whisper comes to us from the other side. But the 



300 OLD AGE. 

inference from the working of intellect, hiving 
knowledge, hiving skill, — at the end of life just 
ready to be born, — affirms the inspirations of af- 
fection and of the moral sentiment. 



THE END. 



Cambridge : Printed by Welch, Bigelow, and Company. 



